Social Sciences and Humanities Open (Jan 2020)
Between soap and science: The pandemic, experts and expendable lives
Abstract
Both soap and science have been implicated in the production of alterity through time and space. Two strands which emerged in the UK government’s discourse about the virus were handwashing and the actions and policies of the government being ‘informed through science’. This article examines how soap and science both acquired significance as part of the public imagination during the COVID-19 health crisis. While soap as a widely available household commodity enabled the public to become morally compliant subjects in the pandemic and to commune through the rituals of handwashing, ‘science’ in contrast became a slippery proposition. ‘Science’ became a justification for all government actions and policies, and was projected onto an opaque domain beyond transparency or contestation about the novel virus and its prolific spread across the nation. The pandemic in the process illuminated the relationship between pseudo-scientific political discourses and eugenics, opening up a mirror into the deeply entrenched structural, social and racial inequalities in society.
