Two Years of the COVID-19 Crisis: Anxiety, Creativity and the Everyday

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this paper the author argues that while we know a great deal about the traumatic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we know less about how people deal with it.  In the abstract and introduction, the author suggests that they will highlight the various creative daily practices that people have used to deal with the emotional toll (specifically, the anxiety) provoked by the instability of the pandemic.

I am excited about the intervention that the paper proposes to make, but I believe it will require revision to be ready for publication.  I have several primary suggestions to strength the manuscript.

First, and most significantly, the body of the paper does not match the set-up.  The author says we focus too much on negative emotions, but they then devote a significant portion of the manuscript’s body to setting up a framework of existential anxiety provoked by the pandemic.  It seems to me that this anxiety is a negative emotion, in which case the author is following in the trajectory of the literature they critique.  If the author wants to retain this attention to the existential anxiety the pandemic has provoked, I would encourage the author to revise the framing at the front-end of the paper.  How is the attention to the negative emotion of anxiety in this manuscript distinct from and/or extending the other scholarship on negative emotions during the pandemic?  

Second, while the author suggests that the focus of the paper will be how people “overcame their sense of insecurity through innovative daily practices” (p.2) they pay comparatively little attention to these practices in the body of the paper.  In the opening the author suggests that there are three types of practices— evasion, mobility, and sociality— but in the body of the paper, two practices are discussed (evasion and solidarity), and they are only discussed briefly.   Thus, I did not completely understand what is set up to be the primary focus of the paper.   

Overall, I struggled to make sense of one coherent argument and found the paper difficult to follow structurally.  This is an important project that I believe can make a real contribution, but I believe that this paper requires revision to accomplish its goals.  

Author Response

• Response to first Reviewer

First of all, I wish to thank for the anonymous reviewer for the comments and suggestions provided for this paper. I have introduced the following major changes: 

1. I have revised the overall organisation of the argument, strengthened the theoretical part and expanded also the analysis related to the Italian context. Because the aim of the paper was to produce a theoretical paper, I have devoted greater attention to the theoretical part, by focussing in particular to existentialist literature, with special focus on Kierkegaard (as suggested by the second reviewer), and IR security literature. 
2. As the reviewer noticed, part of the paper focuses on negative feelings. I have introduced some corrections but mostly left unaltered the part that offers an overview of the time of COVID. Although great attention is devoted to anxiety — and even more in this revision — the concept of anxiety is not read as a negative emotion but as an emotion that leads to freedom and creativity. This was done by introducing the work of Kierkegaard. From this perspective, it does not appear to me that there is a contradiction. This paper still aims at highlighting how people have re-acted and responded to COVID-19 challenging time.
3. Regarding the aspect of mobility and the reviewer’s comment that I have devoted attention only to evasion and sociality and not on mobility, this is true because I consider acts of evasion and sociality also as mobility acts because enacted during a time of forced immobility. Most of the practices of evasions are per se practices of mobility.
4. I do hope that the coherence of the argument is now clear.

Reviewer 2 Report

Two years of the COVID-19 crisis: Anxiety, creativity and the everyday.

This article is super relevant and of fine quality. The basic idea of trying to understand who anxiety can drive politics of radical change is intriguing. There are many good (original) points and arguments, but also a few items to be clarified. 

The article is oddly speaking against IR and for “Psy” disciplines. There is a dire need for the author to spell out the disciplinary platform and angle from which the article is to be understood. IR is a top-down discipline far from the quotidian life, where other disciplines work on these issues all the time. 

One concern is the “everyday” – the “quotidian” life. It is talked about, but it is anonymous and there is no sense provided what this is. The talk about everyday but without showing it can be read as an echo of how IR approach the every day life. One could recommend to consult James Scott “Everyday forms of resistance” (1985) as well as Sherry Ortner’s work “Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal”. [Poor man steals from a rich man? Resistance or survival?]. 

A second concern is methodological and epistemological. While interesting and relevant(!) it is not very clear how the existential philosophical literature connects to quotidian live in a specific historical event. Neither is the existentialist treatment of emotions, which appear as universal, but is in reality constructed in historical time. For instance, Kierkegaard, who in 1846 is blaming the media for producing nihilism and being unable to deal with existential questions leaving people in despair with nothing to hold on to. Author does not treat society’s and hegemonic groups as one of the filters of understanding emotions connected to Covid-19 that supplements those people who did become traumatized and shocked. Anxiety if not fear, as author underscores, yet still author is linking them. Anxiety for Kierkegaard is a condition that transcends historical events like the pandemic, but is crystallized and solidified by it. A paragraph dealing with the sources of people’s knowledge (complementing personal experience for some but not all) is for me a must. Author can then in some depth explain the methodological reasoning behind not including this. Some reflections are necessary about what trauma is the result of the pandemic, and what is starts elsewhere but emergence during the pandemic. 

IR has earlier been criticized in a parallel much similar to that advanced by the author.  It is recommendable that author examines this – if only briefly – revolving around the concept of “human security” at the everyday life level at within peace- and conflict studies. 

The research history, even if brief, of (in)security is super nice.

P 4. 199.. “traumatic was the insecurity caused by immobility restrictions not possible contagion.” To author: “how do you know?” 

Author Response

Thanking the reviewer for the comments, I highlight the followings:

• I do not really speak against IR, but I use IR in a very critical way, drawing on critiques of other authors. I have specified that my use of IR connects to IR’s traditional approach to insecurity. I have included an endnote clarifying the unfamiliar attention to daily practice in IR.
• I have expanded the part on security in IR and offered a brief overview. In this overview, I also included the concept of “human security”, within specifically referring to peace and conflict studies.
• I have not introduced the work of Scott, whose focus is mostly on questions or resistance, and clarified in an endnote, that I more inspired by the work of de Certeau, even if not directly mentioned.
• As suggested, I introduced the work of Kierkegaard, which has helped strengthening my argument, by looking at the concept of anxiety.
• Statement at p. 4, 199 has been removed.

Reviewer 3 Report

Article “Two years of the COVID-19 crisis: Anxiety, creativity and the everyday” focuses on the emotional dimension of the collective impact of the COVID-19. The problem is worth investigating, however, the paper in its current form is not of scientific nature. Although the text is interesting and informative, it has not been supported by scientific discussion. An approximation and description of the problem do not prove a scientific approach, if they are not supported by a critical cause-and-effect analysis based on the literature on the subject and other research of a similar nature. Above all, however, there is a lack of a clearly defined problem and research questions. Therefore, the description and considerations do not lead to clear conclusions while ending with a rather concise summary.

Author Response

I do appreciate the brief comments of the reviewer and I assume that the understanding that the manuscript is “not of scientific nature” connects to the traditional debate between behaviourist approach — and thus the application of the cause-effect also (and always) in social science — and other methods of research.

I believe that my research method, away from demonstrable cause and effect, is consistent with the existentialist approach.

Regarding the lack of clarity of the problem, I have introduced major revisions and better clarified which literature I used and why.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I commend the authors on a very thoughtful revision.  In particular, the mobilization of Kierkegaard here really clarifies the theoretical contribution and pulls the piece together.  I look forward to seeing this paper in print.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper looks better. The authors took into account most of the recommendations.