The Long 2020
Richard Grusin and Maureen Ryan, Editors
By all accounts, 2020 was the longest year in recent memory, as people in the United States and across the globe careened from one unfolding catastrophe to another. This collection assembles a strikingly interdisciplinary group of scholars and thinkers to address how the many crises of 2020—epidemiological, political, ecological, and social—have unfolded, examining their origins and their ongoing effects.
By all accounts, 2020 was the longest year in recent memory, as people in the United States and across the globe careened from one unfolding catastrophe to another. The consequences of this devastating year are sure to impact the planet for decades, if not centuries, to come. This collection considers the question of that long 2020 from the perspective of the lived experience of the year, its long and deep roots in various human and nonhuman pasts, and the transformation of our sense of the future.
The Long 2020 assembles a strikingly interdisciplinary group of scholars and thinkers to address how the many crises of 2020—epidemiological, political, ecological, and social—have unfolded, examining both their origins as well as their ongoing effects. The contributors address questions of time, history, and scale as they have played out, and continue to play out; the relationship between home and environment, with a focus on architecture, breathing, and human–nonhuman relations; and the experience of cultural, political, and social life, deploying cultural and political theory to explore questions of race, gender and sexuality, and democracy.
The global pandemic has still not abated, reflecting the need to rethink our interrelatedness to viruses and other species. In bringing together this diverse group of authors, The Long 2020 offers a variety of perspectives on the impacts of that fraught year, the effects of which continue to permeate daily life.
Contributors: Stacy Alaimo, U of Oregon; Elisabeth Anker, George Washington U; Janelle Baker, Athabasca U, Alberta, Canada; Daniel A. Barber, U of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design; Adia Benton, Northwestern U; Levi R. Bryant, Collin College; Beatriz Colomina, Princeton U; William E. Connolly, Johns Hopkins U; Cary Gabriel Costello, U of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; Megan Craig, Stony Brook U; Wai Chee Dimock, Harvard U; Paulla Ebron, Stanford U; Nirmala Erevelles, U of Alabama; Roderick A. Ferguson, Yale U; Rosa E. Ficek, U of Puerto Rico at Cayey; Stefanie Fishel, U of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland; Jonathan Flatley, Wayne State U; Jennifer Gabrys, U of Cambridge; David Gissen, Parsons School of Design and the New School, New York; Dehlia Hannah, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts; Karen Ho, U of Minnesota; Bonnie Honig, Brown U; Frédéric Keck, Laboratory of Social Anthropology (CNRS Paris); Eben Kirksey, Deakin Institute in Melbourne, Australia; Bernard C. Perley, U of British Columbia, Vancouver; Tom Rademacher; Renya Ramirez, U of California, Santa Cruz; Zoe Todd (Métis); Anna Tsing, U of California, Santa Cruz; Sarah E. Vaughn, U of California, Berkeley; Rebecca Wanzo, Washington U; McKenzie Wark, Eugene Lang College, New York City.
Cover alt text: Title in large rose type over abstract exploding paint in metallic hues. Editor names in white at top.
$30.00 paper ISBN 978-1-5179-1471-4
$120.00 cloth ISBN 978-1-5179-1470-7
320 pages, 39 b&w photos, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2, January 2023
Richard Grusin is professor of English at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Previous volumes in the 21st Century Studies series edited by Grusin and published by Minnesota include The Nonhuman Turn, Anthropocene Feminism, After Extinction, Ends of Cinema, and Insecurity.
Maureen Ryan is research assistant professor at University of South Carolina. She is author of Lifestyle Media in American Culture: Gender, Class, and the Politics of Ordinariness and coeditor of Emergent Feminisms: Complicating a Postfeminist Media Culture.
Contents
Introduction
Kronos
1. The Portal Was Already Here: Epistemological Rupture, Speculation, and Design in the Long 2020
Stacy Alaimo
2. The Pandemic before the Pandemic
Levi R. Bryant
3. The Present, Tense
Megan Craig
4. A Long History of Pandemics
Wai Chee Dimock
5. Environmental Warnings Unheard, from 1962 to 2020
Frédéric Keck
6. The Backdrop of the Post-Truth
Roderick A. Ferguson
7. Crippin’ the Long 2020: As If Disability Matters
Nirmala Erevelles
8. The Last Season: The Cruel Optimism of Generic Futurity
Rebecca Wanzo
9. The Obduracy of the Event and the Tasks of the Intellectual
William E. Connolly
Oikos
10. Modern Architecture—Lying Down
Beatriz Colomina
11. Disabling Environment
David Gissen
12. Ventilation in the Long 2020; or, Open the Window!
Daniel A. Barber
13. Particle Stories: Breathing in the Long 2020
Jennifer Gabrys
14. Air’s Inversions
Dehlia Hannah
15. Freedom’s Just Another Word . . .
Stefanie Fishel
16. The Covid Chronicles: The View from the Virus
Bernard C. Perley
17. Viral Agency and Vulnerability: Rethinking Multispecies Entanglements in the Coronavirus Pandemic
Eben Kirksey
Demos
18. A Tale of Two Protests: Anti-Maskers, Black Lives Matter, and the Specter of Multiracial Democracy
Elisabeth Anker
19. “Everybody Hates the Police”: On Hatred for the Police as a Political Feeling
Jonathan Flatley
20. Who Protects Us from You (Pushing and Pushing and Pushing)
Adia Benton
21. DARVO: The Inversion of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in the Era of Trump’s Mirror
Cary Gabriel Costello
22. The Rain of Frogs
McKenzie Wark
23. The Kids Are OK, Even When Everything Else Is Not
Tom Rademacher
24. Democracy and the Dignity of Work
Bonnie Honig
25. From Devastation to Wonder
Slough Sayers (Janelle Baker, Paulla Ebron, Rosa E. Ficek, Karen Ho, Renya K. Ramirez, Zoe Todd, Anna Tsing, Sarah E. Vaughn)
Contributors
Index