The Pause: Experiencing the Covid-19 Pandemic

When COVID-19 spread across the globe, people experienced protection measures such as social distancing, self-isolation, and self-quarantine as a kind of shutting down or putting on hold of life. Many referred to this experience as a pause. Calling attention to the long history of grappling with pausing in writing on plagues and pandemics, Julian Haladyn explores the pause in its social, political, and personal manifestations over the extended pandemic. The schism between the virus and its prohibitions on human engagement with the world produced a crisis, Haladyn argues, in which, for an extended time, it was impossible to imagine a future. The Pause is a cultural inquiry into a moment when human life around the globe seemed to halt, as well as the social symptoms that defined it. The Pause captures the experience of being inside the pandemic, even as that experience continues to unfold. It regards our current situation not for what it may become in the future, but rather as a moment of mass uncertainty and existential hesitation.

Julian Jason Haladyn is an art historian, cultural theorist, and assistant professor at OCAD University.