“A White Bag We Move”: The Dead Body and Caregivers During the COVID-19 Pandemic
In hospitals and mortuaries, the bodily reality of patients has never been so palpable and problematic as in times of pandemic. Approaching crisis management through the prism of bodies has become as much an empirical entry point as an analytical tool. Preservation requirements, risks of contamination, and the accumulation of bodies are all issues that have created multidimensional disorders (logistical, psychosocial, and ontological) among caregivers and families. Our four-month investigation in the mortuary of a Parisian referral hospital (February-May 2021) has enabled us to take stock of this situation. The sanitary restrictions produced major cognitive and sensorial disorders for those taking charge of the deceased as well as a brutal and painful loss of meaning for caregivers and families, which was somewhat palliated through recourse to various sensorial and bodily-anchored rationalities. The “Covided dead body”, a reifying figure of deceased with COVID‐19 subjected to the brutality of sanitary protocols, had to be resymbolized. It seems essential to reposition the pandemic not only in terms of biosecurity but also in terms of moral, social, and cultural understanding.