Embodiment and protection

Abstract

ABSTRACT Our piece starts with the observation that protection plays a specific role in the so-called health-security nexus. This is so because protection, in the context of infectious diseases, has a very bodily connotation. Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic ‘brought our own bodies back to us’ (Purnell 2021, 3) by making us aware of the invisible threats potentially residing within the bodies of others and the threat this might ultimately pose to our own body’s health. Bodies are potential victims and vectors; they can be at the same time existentially threatened and threatening. This productive ambiguity inherent in ideas of protection in health is best illustrated and troubled through the health care worker. We suggest protective clothing as a material entrypoint to disentangle this ambiguity inherent in care and protection as it helps to turn to questions of relational vulnerabilities over binary and dichotomous conceptions of protection.