On July 5, 2024, Prof. Arisa Iwakawa, Associate Professor at Waseda University, delivered a lecture titled “To Register the Pandemic.” The COVID-19 pandemic made marginalized people more visible and revealed social imbalances. How should we register these marginalized people? And how can we imagine a common world in which people with differences can live together?

Prof. Iwakawa suggested Judith Butler’s ideas as a clue to this issue. Butler’s argument is based on the AIDS crisis and its activism. In the 1980s, the U.S. government linked AIDS to certain groups and designated them as “high-risk groups.” This misconception fostered the existing homophobia. In the face of discrimination and lack of support, people in the “high-risk group” shared a sense of “Silence=Death” and started to speak up for themselves and launched social activism.

Judith Butler sets “the future anterior” and “grievability” as conditions of life. “The future anterior” means the firm belief that when a child is born, the life can be regarded as a life. “Grievability” means the possibility that the death will be mourned by others. These are the two conditions in which the child can live. However, in the cases of the AIDS crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, we can see how easily these conditions of life are taken away from minorities. Therefore, we should register the pandemic.

Finally, Prof. Iwakawa suggested that the power of words and narratives is key to imagining a common world. When marginalized people find their own words and tell their own stories, or when we speak up and protest inequalities in society, these new words and narratives will be able to transform our society.

Report by NIIMOTO Konomi (EAA Research Assistant)