Entanglements of Care and Contagion: Masking in Pandemic Times

Abstract Care and security are intimately entangled. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the crucial yet utterly neglected role of care for societies to function. The threat of contagion connecting different bodies, very vividly, and in fact biologically, emphasized the relationality of human beings. Albeit transcending a purely biological account of connectivity, this relational understanding sits at the center of an ethics of care. Yet, this relationality is hardly addressed in current health–security approaches. We argue that a feminist ethics of care offers a more relational, yet critical understanding of health security that enables us to be sensitive towards the distribution and practice of solidarity, attentiveness, and responsibility. To put this claim into practice and to thus contribute to the international political sociology of health, we conceptualize protective clothing as a materialization of a politics of care in contagious settings. The article proceeds in three steps. First, we specify how an ethics of care perspective can enrich our understanding of health security. Second, we introduce the mask as a materialization of a politics of care and the merit such a perspective holds. Finally, we investigate the role of the mask as a medical object and as a visual manifestation on the local and global levels.