Thinking in pandemic times: notes on what we are becoming

Abstract

The article highlights the Bergsonian concept of perception in Matter and Memory, in order to stress the present reduction of our possible actions and its consequences. It discusses some effects of the isolation and social distance that jeopardize the porosity of the skin and the openness of the body to the world and develops the notion of a teflon-skin. All those issues are then articulated with Heinrich Von Kleist’s essay Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden (“On the gradual construction of thoughts during speech”). In this essay Kleist examines the intricate intertwining of thought, speech and the atmospheric changes of the Gemüt. Also explored in Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, Kleist’s discussion of the lively production and exchange of ideas helps us to evaluate some relevant implications of the situation of isolation and confinement due to the pandemy.