CORONALAG: time, place, and power in Pandemic Year One

Abstract

This paper introduces the idea of Coronalag, a concept derived from the experience of disaster time in 2020, and one that we hope assists in the ongoing interrogation of time as a venue for the exercise of power in a disaster. First, in introducing Coronalag, we are attentive to disparate experiences of the pandemic across spaces and communities, shared in and among those settings in real time, often through social and other virtual media. Next, we explore the efforts of disaster management officials to manage the lag of time between outbreak, state action, and viable pandemic control. Governmental disaster management in the face of Coronalag was often performed theatrically with hygiene rituals, with reams of data and with daily press conferences all in the service of 'flattening the curve'. Last, we extend the Coronalag concept to encompass the many extraordinary efforts of people in the United States and around the world to repackage time into increments that captured their frustrations with structures of racism, capitalism, and other forms of oppression. Pandemic time shifted perspectives and opened opportunities for protesters and dissidents to craft new time zones, harnessing the strangeness of disaster time and using it for their own empowerment.