The Face Mask In COVID Times

A Sociomaterial Analysis

Deborah Lupton, Clare Southerton, Marianne Clark, Ash Watson

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9783110723793
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

The simple fabric face mask is a key agent in the fight against the global spread of COVID-19. However, beyond its role as a protective covering against coronavirus infection, the face mask is the bearer of powerful symbolic and political power and arouses intense emotions. Adopting an international perspective informed by social theory, The Face Mask in COVID Times: A Sociomaterial Analysis offers an intriguing and original investigation of the social, cultural and historical dimensions of face-masking as a practice in the age of COVID.

Rather than Beck's 'risk society', we are now living in a 'COVID society', the long-term effects of which have yet to be experienced or imagined. Everything has changed. The COVID crisis has generated novel forms of sociality and new ways of living and moving through space and time. In this new world, the face mask has become a significant object, positioned as one of the key ways people can protect themselves and others from infection with the coronavirus. The face mask is rich with symbolic meaning as well as practical value. In the words of theorist Jane Bennett, the face mask has acquired a new 'thing-power' as it is coming together with human bodies in these times of uncertainty, illness and death.

The role of the face mask in COVID times has been the subject of debate and dissension, arousing strong feelings. The historical and cultural contexts in which face masks against COVID contagion are worn (or not worn) are important to consider. In some countries, such as Japan and other East Asian nations, face mask wearing has a long tradition. Full or partial facial coverings, such as veiling, is common practice in regions such as the Middle East. In many other countries, including most countries in the Global North, most people, beyond health care workers, have little or no experience of face masks. They have had to learn how to make sense of face masking as a protective practice and how to incorporate face masks into their everyday practices and routines.

Face masking practices have become highly political. The USA has witnessed protests against face mask wearing that rest on 'sovereign individualism', a notion which is highly specific to the contemporary political climate in that country. Face masks have also been worn to make political statements: bearing anti-racist statements, for example, but also Trump campaign support. Meanwhile, celebrities and influencers have sought to advocate for face mask wearing as part of their branding, while art makers, museums, designers and novelty fashion manufacturers have identified the opportunity to profit from this sudden new market. Face masks have become a fashion item as well as a medical device: both a way of signifying the wearer's individuality and beliefs and their ethical stance in relation to the need to protect their own and others' health.

The Face Mask in COVID Times: A Sociomaterial Analysis provides a short and accessible analysis of the sociomaterial dimensions of the face mask in the age of COVID-19. The book presents seven short chapters and an epilogue. We bring together sociomaterial theoretical perspectives with compelling examples from public health advice and campaigns, anti-mask activism as well as popular culture (news reports, blog posts, videos, online shopping sites, art works) to illustrate our theoretical points, and use Images to support our analysis.

1 Introduction: The Shifting Meanings and Practices of Face Masks

Introduction

When US President Donald Trump announced via a tweet in the early hours of 2 October 2020 that he and his wife Melania had tested positive for COVID-19, news reports and social media outlets were inundated with commentary. Many points were made about Trump’s position on face mask wearing as a preventive measure against infection with the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). For months, Trump had notoriously downplayed the dangers of COVID to his fellow Americans and had discounted the need to wear masks. For him, mask wearing was a sign of weakness: giving into and acknowledging COVID risk. Trump had rarely been seen wearing a mask in his public engagements, even after the USA became the global leader in numbers of COVID infections and deaths. In the first presidential debate, only days prior to his announcement that he was infected with COVID, Trump had openly ridiculed his opponent in the imminent presidential election, Joe Biden, for wearing masks as a matter of course. Neither Trump nor most of his family members attending the debate wore masks. When Trump left hospital after treatment for COVID, he removed his mask as soon as he arrived at the White House to pose for photographers, despite still being contagious. Joe Biden, for his part, continued to wear his mask assiduously in his public appearances, pointedly commenting that ‘Masks matter. These masks, they matter. It matters. It saves lives. It prevents the spread of disease’ (Smith, 2020). In response to Trump’s position on masks, memes circulating on social media included satirical cartoons showing Trump’s open mouth blasting out coronavirus particles as he shouted, ‘Real men don’t wear masks!’. The New Yorker magazine’s 14 October 2020 edition featured a cover with a drawing of a yelling Trump blinded by a face mask worn across his eyes. Meanwhile, entrepreneurial face mask producers marketed a mask showing Trump’s unmistakable sneering mouth.

The position of Trump and Biden on face masks could not be more different: and they exemplify the deep political divisions in the USA on masks as a preventive measure against infection with the novel coronavirus. In this book, we discuss these, and all the manifold other complexities – and in some cases, contradictions – of the COVID face mask as a sociomaterial object. At first glance, the face mask recommended for everyday wear as a protective device against the spread of the coronavirus is an innocuous, low-tech object. Manufactured from either non-woven plastic or cloth materials, the COVID mask is designed to be worn across the nose and mouth to reduce the exhalation and inhalation of viral particles in fine liquid droplets and miniscule particles (aerosols) that are propelled through the air via people’s breath: particularly if they are speaking, shouting, sneezing, coughing, singing or breathing heavily due to physical exercise. Until the COVID pandemic erupted in early 2020, face masks were mostly worn by healthcare professionals when they were carrying out surgical or dental procedures, or by people in East Asian countries when they were out in public during the influenza or hay fever season. The emergence and rapid expansion across the globe of the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19, was officially declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a pandemic on 11 March 2020 (World Health Organization, 2020a). Since then, the coronavirus has spread rapidly, with many countries experiencing both first and second waves of the pandemic within six months of the first cases being identified in the city of Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019.

The COVID crisis has sparked new forms of sociality, everyday practices and ways of moving through time and space (Watson et al., 2020; Gammon and Ramshaw, 2020; Lupton and Willis, 2021). Among many other changes to private and public life, the COVID crisis has brought the humble face mask into new prominence. In the post-COVID world, it has become a significant object, positioned as one of the most important ways that people can protect themselves and others from infection with the novel coronavirus by acting as a barrier (however imperfect) between their breath and that of others. However, as our personal experiences recounted in the Preface and the furore around Trump’s behaviour demonstrate, the face mask in the age of COVID is far more than a simple medical device. It has become the key symbol of the COVID crisis: with image after image of people’s faces complete with masks in everyday settings used in popular culture to signify life in the COVID age (see, for example, Figure 1.1

Figure 1.1: A couple in New York City wearing COVID masks. Photo credit: Julian Wan, Unsplash.

). The COVID mask is rich with symbolic meaning, affective forces and embodied sensations as well as practical value in these times of uncertainty, isolation, illness and death. The COVID mask is simultaneously a medical, social and multi-sensory device. Its presence or absence on the human face bears with it cultural, political and moral meanings. As the COVID crisis has intensified, fluctuated and diversified, so too, have these meanings.

The COVID crisis and the COVID face mask have a contemporary shared history and future, but the face mask’s histories and politics pre-empt those of the novel coronavirus by centuries and go well beyond the frames of the health and medical context. Helped along by not only by Donald Trump’s pronouncements and their accompanying media commentary but also by the statements of health officials, politicians and other public figures internationally, face masks have received greater prominence in public debates and popular culture than at any other time in human history. There has been considerable debate in the medical and public health literature, policy circles, government agencies and the mass media about the value of masking wearing as a preventive practice. These debates have in some regions and countries flared into political activism and unrest, with groups agitating against mask wearing and particularly any attempts on the part of health authorities and government agencies to mandate their use. The most notable example is the USA, where protests erupted against face mask wearing that rest on ‘sovereign individualism’, a notion which is highly specific to the contemporary political climate in that country. In the USA, face masks have also been worn to make political statements: bearing anti-racist statements, for example, but also support for Trump.

Meanwhile, images and repurposings of the face mask have proliferated in popular culture, dominating social media discussions and generating an outpouring of internet memes, tweets, Instagram photos and TikTok videos that make fun of, support or agitate against mask wearing. Assisted by its prominent position on people’s faces (or indeed, its equally obvious absence), the COVID mask has become a way of signifying the wearer’s individuality, sense of style and beliefs or their ethical stance in relation to the need to protect their own and others’ health. Celebrities and social media influencers have advocated for or against mask wearing as part of their branding. Museums, fashion designers, novelty fashion manufacturers and craftspeople on Etsy have identified the opportunity to profit from this sudden new market. A plethora of jokey masks can be found, with images of bizarre human facial features or animal faces, or warning people that ‘If you can read this, you’re too close’ or ‘Quit staring. Where’s yours?’. Artists have played with the idea of the COVID mask by imagining incongruous objects as masks, creating highly embellished or stylised versions or using disposable masks as materials in their art. Memes, street art and other imagery have show popular cultural icons such as Baby Yoda and Star Trek’s Mr Spock with medical masks superimposed on their faces (see Figure 1.2

Figure 1.2: Street art featuring Mr Spock sporting a COVID mask. Photo credit: Nick Bolton, Unsplash.

), while subjects of famous portraits, including the Mona Lisa, the Girl with a Pearl Earring and a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh have been similarly altered. Television dramas made post-COVID, including US series Law & Order: SVU and Grey’s Anatomy, have begun to show characters wearing protective masks.

This chapter introduces the rationale for the book, addressing the question of why sociomaterial theories are so important to make sense of the meanings and practices related to the COVID face mask. It provides the context for understanding the COVID mask as a sociocultural artefact, discussing the history of the face mask internationally. We also provide an overview of the sociomaterial theoretical perspectives we are using in our analysis. Sociomaterialism is a broad term that is generally employed to described contemporary theoretical approaches interested in exploring the materialities of human existence. These approaches often have a strong political and ethical bent, directing attention to the ways in which humans and nonhumans live with and in relation to each other (Fox and Alldred, 2017). In this book, we draw particularly on Foucauldian theory, domestication theory and the more-than-human theory offered in Indigenous and First Nations philosophies and in the work of feminist new materialist scholars. We ‘think with theory’ (Jackson and Mazzei, 2012) to consider how the COVID mask has taken on extraordinary meanings, values and affective intensities. This chapter, therefore, provides the basis for elucidating the divergent sociocultural responses to COVID masks in contemporary political and geographical contexts that we discuss throughout the book.

Sociomaterialism: theoretical perspectives and concepts

In many strands of sociomaterialism theory, the concept of the assemblage is adopted to encapsulate the idea of ever-changing human-nonhuman gatherings. From a sociomaterialist perspective, the human body is conceptualised as porous and multiple, shape shifting, mobile and heterogeneous. It responds to its environment in ways that may increase or limit its agential capacities (Fox and Alldred, 2017; Andrews and Duff, 2019; Lupton, 2019, 2020a). Sociomaterialism perspectives position material objects such as face masks as contributing to assemblages of people with nonhuman things. It is with and through these combinations of humans and nonhumans that agencies and forces are generated. Thus, for example, we can think of the human body as a more-than-human assemblage of microbial flora, chemicals, fluids and other physical matter, ingesting certain substances, inhaling and exhaling gases, clothed in various objects, moving through a variety of places and spaces, continually interacting with other people and with other living creatures and using technologies such as spectacles, vehicles and smartphones … just to name some of the potential agents in a more-than-human assemblage. Material objects such as face masks are designed with specific imagined uses in mind – or affordances. Human bodies too have affordances: the fleshy capacity to speak, sense, move, feel, respond, remember, exert awareness of and comment on their surroundings. The affordances of human bodies come together with the affordances of things in complex and multiple ways (Lupton, 2019, 2020a).

Michel Foucault’s writings on biopolitics, biopower and governmentality identified how people’s bodies are governed and managed by their incorporation of health-related advice into their everyday practices. Foucauldian analyses of medicine and public health highlight the intersections between the generation of medical knowledge, the role of health promotion and monitoring agencies and the emphasis on self-responsibility for maintaining good health that characterise contemporary western societies. In his books The Birth of the Clinic (1975), Madness and Civilization (1965) and Discipline and Punish (1977), Foucault reflected on the ways that certain forms of architecture – the medical clinic, the asylum, the prison – operate to discipline and monitor human bodies. In his later work, Foucault (1984, 1986) focused on the embodied practices involved in the care of the self and the government of public health. He traced modern states’ preoccupation with managing the bodies and health of citizens back to the eighteenth century in Europe. A new discourse emerged at that time which positioned health as a collective concern that required population-based measures. By the late nineteenth century, the field of epidemiology had emerged, directed at monitoring population health and identifying causes of disease to better target preventive measures. Sociologists drawing on Foucault’s scholarship have identified how medical and public health authorities were charged with gathering data to inform population health strategies: including information campaigns about the strategies people should use to protect themselves from infectious diseases. Dominant concepts of health and illness position many diseases as the result of a lack of taking responsibility for self-care. People are expected to take steps to manage their health status as entrepreneurial and self-disciplined subjects: engaging in practices such as regular exercise, body weight control, eating according to nutritional guidelines and avoiding tobacco and excessive alcohol consumption (Lupton, 1995, 2012; Petersen and Lupton, 1996).

As Foucauldian analyses of medicine and public health have demonstrated, late modern western concepts of human embodiment position the autonomous, closed-off individual body as the ideal (Lupton, 1995, 2012; Petersen and Lupton, 1996). Underpinning this ideal are deeply seated cultural anxieties about loss of bodily control and blurred boundaries between one’s own body and those of others. Infectious disease outbreaks represent a strong challenge to these western notions of embodiment. People are confronted with the risk of a virus that moves easily between bodies through the air: contained in tiny droplets that are invisible to the human eye. Feminist philosophers such as Margrit Shildrick (1997) and Elizabeth Grosz (1994) have been writing for several decades about the implications of the ontological permeability of human bodies for the marginalisation and stigmatisation of bodies that are deemed to be ‘too open’ to the world. Shildrick’s ‘leaky bodies’ and Grosz’s ‘volatile bodies’ both emphasise this openness and fluidity of body boundaries. They point out that women’s bodies in western cultures have traditionally been positioned as more fluid and permeable than men’s bodies, as have the bodies of other marginalised social groups, such as people with disabilities, people of colour and members of the lower class and the poor. Privileged adult able-bodied white male bodies, in contrast, have been represented as better able to achieve the ideal of the tightly contained, highly disciplined and regulated body that has emerged in western cultures (Grosz, 1994; Lupton, 2012; Shildrick, 1997).

Domestication theory, taken up in media and cultural studies and in science and technology studies, has directed some attention to these aspects of quotidian lives. Domestication scholars argue that the process by which an object becomes domesticated involves four elements: appropriation, objectification, incorporation and conversion (Silverstone et al., 2005). Through appropriation, the individual or household acquires an object (usually by purchasing it), takes it home and gradually makes it part of their embodied practices or spaces. The object is thereby rendered from an impersonal to a personalised and customised thing. Objectification involves the location and arrangement of the object within the home, with the concept of ‘home’ being somewhat extended to intimate objects carried by or worn on the body of users, such as jewellery, clothing or smartphones. Incorporation refers to all the ways that the object is integrated into the user’s daily life through frequent use, both intended and unintended, as well as the different capacities these uses generate. Finally, conversion refers to how the users of the object integrate the object into their sense of self identity and use the object to express themselves (Silverstone et al., 2005). From this perspective, the household is a moral economy involved in the dynamic production and exchange of meanings with the public world, and the domestication of the object expresses meanings about the household to broader society. The adoption of objects and technologies, according to the domestication approach, is negotiated through this moral economy, rather than determined purely by the objects or the people who use them. As Berker and colleagues (2006: 2) argue: ‘technologies have to be house-trained, they have to be integrated into the structures, daily routines and values of users and their environments’. In this book, we show how COVID masks can become domesticated (or ‘house-trained’) – but also how some people resist domestication of the mask.

While domestication theory and Foucault’s work identified integral material elements that contribute to knowledges and practices related to human bodies, the sociomaterialist scholarship we characterise as ‘more-than-human theory’ offers a more expansive understanding. More-than-human theory is espoused in the work of Indigenous and First Nations philosophies (Watts, 2013; TallBear, 2014; Bawaka Country et al., 2016; Todd, 2016; Hernández et al., 2020) and that of feminist new materialism scholars such as Donna Haraway (2016), Karen Barad (2007), Jane Bennett (2009), Rosi Braidotti (2019), Stacey Alaimo (2016) and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (2017). The term ‘more-than’ term vastly expands the category and scope of the human, acknowledging that people are always already more-than-human, coming together and living with and through other people, other animals and living creatures, and with non-living things, places and spaces (Lupton, 2019, 2020a). It emphasises the relational and distributed nature of agencies when assemblages of humans and nonhumans come together, and the forces that are generated by these gatherings.

From this perspective, humans and nonhumans alone do not possess or exert agency: it is only in their assemblages with other actors that agency is generated and expressed. Bennett’s concept of ‘thing-power’ is an evocative way of encapsulating the vibrancies and vitalities of these assemblages; or as she puts it, ‘the curious ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to product effects dramatic and subtle’ (2004: 351)....

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• 1 Introduction: The Shifting Meanings and Practices of Face Masks
• 2 Face Mask Politics
• 3 Living with Face Masks
• 4 Face Masks and Breath
• 5 Face Mask Making Cultures
• 6 Face Masking and Care
• Epilogue: Masks Matter
• Index