Dictators of Disease:
Autocratic Creep in the Lingering Lockdown
Dictators of Disease:
Autocratic Creep in the Lingering Lockdown
About My Project
From 2019 to 2021 I lived in Hong Kong, during which I saw the protests first-hand. I saw people screaming “ga yao” (add oil) from their windows, and people in the streets, fighting for their freedom and independence. And then … I saw silence. COVID-19, in combination with the Hong Kong national security law, suppressed the protests under the guise of “public health concerns.” COVID was used as an excuse to reshape history, forcing a “mainlandification.” The Chinese government slowly shut down most of the pro-democracy newspapers and removed sculptures and works of art referring to the Tiananmen massacre.
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Similarly, my home country Greece has experienced a growing intervention by the police in the public space justified in the context of pandemic measures. Since the beginning of 2020, there has been an increase of police surveillance, with the simultaneous imposition of various restrictions on movement, and an aggressive response against public gatherings, regardless of their nature and size. In light of this, a number of changes that emerged in the fields of public order and policing during the beginning of COVID-19, have a more permanent character in the post-pandemic era.
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In my project, I will look at the shared experience of increased authoritarianism that many countries have been experiencing in a post-pandemic society, looking at two countries I have lived in: Greece and Hong Kong. Lastly, I will discuss the contribution of art as a form of companionship, community creation, and civil engagement during this encroaching authoritarianism.
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The Dunbar Fellowship is a program sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies, an institute at Claremont McKenna College. This fellowship allows CMC students interested in the humanities field to engage in a fully funded self-directed project that discusses a related topic.
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2022 Dunbar Summer Fellowship: Shared Spaces and Shared Experiences.
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"Although the COVID-19 pandemic is not over, we have returned to sharing our campus space. Being in the same space contributes to our sharing experiences as well; we can study together, work together, play together, and so on. The Gould Center aimed to support a few students in summer 2022 to work on individual or group projects, focused in humanistic inquiry, that aim in some way to explore the significance of shared spaces and shared experiences."
About the Dunbar Fellowship
