Do you think the Covid-19 crisis has proven the fragility of the system?

The Covid-19 crisis shows us very crudely that global capitalism seems a very powerful system and is based on large layers of economic, social, material and health precariousness... It is an individual and structural precariousness, which also affects the situation of public care services in different countries of the world. It's a system based on activity and growth, but when it has a pathology, it can't stop, it can't take care of the lives that it exudes and explodes every day. Nor has he abandoned them, like the elderly. More than the fragility of the system, it shows us the inequality and social violence generated by our normality.

Has the health alert shown our vulnerability?

I am amazed that there are so many people repeating this phrase, from the philosophers to Antonio Banderas; I wonder what life these people have and what realities they know. Don't they have dependent elderly people in their families? Don't you live with people with disabilities or mental disorders? Do you not know that great vulnerable reality of many of the neighborhoods and territories of our cities? Are they not affected by cancers and other pathologies derived from environmental and social factors? Vulnerability and interdependence existed before, for most, they are the bread of every day. What prevented us from seeing them and thinking about them?

Social beings who are people, can we live long in this confinement situation?

If we're afraid, people adapt to everything, we've lived through much worse things. Wars, sieges, mass closures. Sectors of the world suffer from these situations every day, in refugee camps, countries at war, ghettos, imprisoned collectives… history shows us many examples. In confined sociability there is nothing new, its global and global dimension is new, and it usually affects those of us who have the most rights and opportunities for mobility.

Over the past few days, we've seen a lot of collective collaborative movements between neighbors and neighbors. But, on the other hand, is it possible that this social distancing makes us more individualistic?

We're seeing two things: the mutual help networks and the cops on the balcony. Neighbors and whistle-blowers who work together. These conditions bring to light the best and the worst of us. So, we don't have to just take care of ourselves and our own, and I think it's very important to take care of the general environment that this experience gathers, the representations that we give, the imaginaries that are going to come out of being confined. If you gain fear and mistrust among your neighbors, we will take one more step towards an authoritarian society.

 

 

 

 

And to children, how can containment affect them? How are they going to return to normal?

I will say this clearly: I do not understand that dogs can leave and children cannot. Parents are the most interested in their care and, therefore, I believe that they will not be put at risk. I believe that the confinement of children is too demanding, given that it will be long and that many children live in very poor homes, in dark and very narrow places, with no cultural resources at their fingertips or without sunshine. I am glad that this situation can have an emotional and physical impact on them and that there are voices questioning this situation. There are children who are living small "holidays" with their parents and there are children who are immersed in real hells.

There are the governments that close the borders and preach 'home first'. Do you think those populist governments are going to get stronger?

Yes, I think that, unfortunately, populism is going to be strengthened, and also all kinds of clear and exclusionary responses. This crisis is in addition to the previous ones, to the terrorist and economic crisis, and to which, for example, the climatic crisis follows. These crises weaken the social fabric and alienate human groups and social classes in the face of the idea of a shared future. In the face of this crisis, it is easy to protect yourself behind your own privileges and to regard others as a threat. It is therefore not enough to launch a social shock to alleviate the damage of the crisis; we need critical work to help us see how we have come here and how we want to go out as a society.

Will we have confidence in the institutions for support or no longer?

By country, but I believe that confidence in the institutions has always been relative, and that does not seem to me to be bad, because they are not always in the best hands. On the other hand, what are the institutions? One thing is public services, such as health and education, social assistance in general, are well valued and highly valued throughout society, except for those who do not need them and despise them. Another thing is what we call political institutions, which have long demonstrated their weakness in responding to the problems of our time.

Will this crisis increase social control over the population? After all this, certain forms of social control can be normalized with the "excuse" of the virus.

Yes, I assume that social control will be one of the great winners of this pandemic. If we're left home with a geolocation, or a QR or any data, who won't be available for that exchange? Our freedom of movement, albeit one of care, is more valued in our perception than many other freedoms.

The telematic control of the telephone is here, for example, that of mobility. Will these controls be increased on the pretext of the safety we can have in the face of diseases until they are dangerous?

We've long been giving away uncontrolled data. It costs a lot to know how and when we do it, because we don't realize it in the moment. Quite the opposite. It's done through the applications that we use alone, thinking that they supposedly multiply our independence, our communication, our private worlds. So do our secrets. But they contribute to privatizing our common experiences, increasing their economic, political and ideological benefits.

Lockdown is not the same for everyone, and this crisis has also led to class differences.

The classism of confinement seems to me to be a bloody reality. I said it on a television show and I got all kinds of insults, as if I were denying that the virus can kill influential or upper-class people. Of course it can and does. But we talk about the confinement, the management of the crisis, its labor and social consequences, the square meters of the room of Queen Letizia or the meters that its dependents have... We talk about who has to go out to perform certain cleaning and care tasks, for example. We are talking about the most precarious self-employed, small businesses, we are talking about a culture that seems very glamorous, but years ago debts and precariousness accumulate … We are talking about migrants who have been halfway on the border or with papers… I wonder what is going to happen when the coronavirus crisis falls into a social reality that is already in crisis.

Looking forward, what world can we imagine beyond the apocalyptic world?

Apocalyptic accounts are ideological, they are in the hands of religion, politics or the media. Those who can end our existence are beginning to exercise their power. Therefore, apocalyptic reports must be answered and unmasked: Who cares? Who is your beneficiary? But to answer, we don't have to fool ourselves, saying that now yes, with this crisis we will learn the true value of life. If that were the case, we would also have learned it in previous wars or crises. The value of life is to fight day by day, and the most punished anonymous people are the ones who have never ceased to do so.

How are we going to recover from this situation as people or as a society?

To recover is to continue living, but without reinventing the whole situation that has brought us to this day. Will we be able? Or do we want to suddenly forget everything that has been suffered? We must not dramatise, but we must not forget it either. Otherwise, we have learned nothing.