Constructing the Not-So-New Normal: Ambiguity and Familiarity in Governmental Regulations of Intimacies during the Pandemic

Abstract

This article examines the early evidence for the emergence of new governmental regulations of intimacies during the COVID-19 pandemic based on the authors’ experience of hospital treatment in Russia. It discusses the increasingly used notion of ‘the new normal’ and its potential implications for citizen–state relations. Approaching these emerging regulations from both legal and anthropological perspectives, the authors propose the alternative concept of ‘the not-so-new normal’, which combines discursive ambiguity with familiar patterns of control. The notion of lawscape is used to systematise the bodily control practices inside and outside a Russian hospital and to place them in a wider context. Applying the concept of rupture, the authors claim that ‘the not-so-new normal’ obfuscates the break with pre–COVID-19 reality to reinforce existing hierarchies and inequalities.