Tread lightly: Liminality and Covid‐19 reflections

Abstract

AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic has reshaped people's lives in a multitude of different ways, and women especially have found themselves managing in‐between identities, spaces, and realities due to increased domestic, homeschooling, and work demands. In this paper, I share fragmented observations on COVID‐19 inequalities on a societal level, but I anchor those observations with my personal reflections. I use liminality as a theoretical anchor and an artistic methodological tool to explore being in‐between experiences, thoughts, and modes of writing. I stage my reflections as a 10 KM run, with points of discussion set at each kilometer. The run is symbolic of the liminal space the pandemic represents, where bodies and minds, whether knowingly or unknowingly, are in an in‐between journey – from places of origin to unfamiliar destinations. This paper adds to feminist efforts of writing differently which shows that knowledge can be produced and conveyed beyond the rigid script of academic convention. It also expands the use of liminality beyond a theoretical lens and into a methodological approach that considers writing as a melding between different genres, states, and modes of knowing.