What We Are Reading:
Small Things

Samantha Hill

In The Point’s “Quarantine Journal” Dawn Herrera Helphand reflects upon Hannah Arendt’s observation of the “infectious charm and petit Bonheur of the French way of life.” Herrera Helphand argues that Arendt’s reflection is a critique of petit bourgeois materialism to make the case against “coziness” in late capitalism.
 

            Arendt’s work is a master class in shade, and in this passage, everything depends on the word appear: the cozy corners she describes were perfectly consistent with the Vichy regime. Sequestered in Trump’s America with adequate broadband and time to kill, every day brings new resources to render the experience something other than privation: streaming Pilates and fine dining and LeVar Burton’s voice, and for the kids, live drawing lessons with Mo Willems. But aside from introducing podcasts to prevent mealtime fratricide, in my house we’ve been doing the same things we’ve always done while we’re at home: reading, writing, drawing; avoiding work, then doing it; trying to stay off the internet; making little messes and cleaning them up. These intimacies of private life have only been intensified, as have the rituals of close friendship.  Conducted onscreen, they take on a strange and tender vibe; we perform our vulnerability to nature and bad government by appearing to one another in our jammies.

There is a real, qualitative difference, however, in the public sphere which has transcended the form of its classical models to become totally virtual, and so, wholly and utterly private. The flesh and blood of the presidential primaries has vaporized overnight—not even their simulacra remain. The situation is such that we couldn’t get out into the streets even if we wanted to, much less into the offices of our elected officials. As our duty to one another clashes with our duty as citizens, the necessary conditions of slowing the pandemic have the effect of further narrowing the regular channels of popular power.