“Atmos-fear”: A psycho-semiotic analysis of messages in New York everyday life

Tateo, Luca

doi:10.1515/sem-2017-0101

Cited by 4 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Unexpected, disruptive events such as a pandemic enhance uncertainty about the future and require a reconfiguration of meaning. In the case of COVID-19, the disruption and uncertainty occurred in the context of the global cultivation of panic and fear through a shared narrative that affected our psychological functioning at both individual and collective levels, compelling a reshaping of meaning (De Luca Picione et al., 2021; Tateo, 2019).…”

Section: Illusions Of Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pandemic Atmos-Fear

Tateo

Marsico

Valsiner

2022

International Perspectives in Psychology

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Abstract. Psychology has been challenged by its own terminological limitations, in which phenomena of large-scale, field-like kind force us to innovate with our theoretical tools. Phenomena with global impacts – epidemics, pandemics, famines, and the like – remain on the periphery of psychology’s theoretical efforts. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 is no different. Like previous pandemics, it reveals the difficulty of dealing with phenomena on a global scale and understanding the inherent organization of the cloud-like phenomena. Psychological research has mainly focused on individual traumatic experiences, impacts, and consequences. Less attention has been paid to how people in different societies make meaning of these changes in everyday life. Psychologically, people want to control the pandemic, while in reality we simply escape from it. All of the measures instituted in response to it are escape-oriented, not glorious accounts of winning a war on the invisible enemy. Theoretically, we learn from the current experience the relevance of how humans escalate and circumvent the proliferation of the panic of fear through building and demolishing borders in mind and society. We all are living in a sort of atmos-fear, a culturally cultivated state of affective limbo that is easy to trigger and difficult to modulate. How do human beings deal with this core issue of feeling safe/unsafe, and how does it affect individual and collective conduct? This paper attempts to demonstrate how the COVID-19 example can theoretically illuminate new perspectives of international psychology that will become increasingly more crucial in a future where global events are likely to recur.

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Section: Illusions Of Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pandemic Atmos-Fear

Tateo

Marsico

Valsiner

2022

International Perspectives in Psychology

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“…Under the distress and isolation of the pandemic, we gathered in the technosphere as colleagues and friends from three continents-a group of authors from varied disciplines: clinical and social psychology, philosophy, history and philosophy of science, human geography, and botany-to make sense, to understand the meaning of this new microbiological-semiotic-technological context from a polyphonic, intersubjective perspective. Our dialogic approach followed Bakhtin's (1963) notion of polyphony, foregrounding the active role that speakers play in selecting among inner discourses and building continuous meaning in heteroglossic dialogue (Steinby & Tintti, 2013). This is not to say that we aim to predominantly represent, embody, our disciplines in this regard, but rather to conduct the inquiry as embodied persons whose professional commitments mirror long-standing histories and new becomings.…”

Section: Remaining Human Together Apart: Connecting Through Walking and Dialoguementioning

confidence: 99%

Remaining Human in COVID-19: Dialogues on Psychogeography

et al. 2021

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Post-COVID-19 environments have challenged our embodied identities with these challenges coming from a variety of domains, that is, microbiological, semiotic, and digital. We are embedded in a new complex set of relations, with other species, with cultural signs, and with technology and venturing further into an era that pushes back on our anthropocentrism to create a post-human dystopia. This does not imply that we are less human or forfeit ethics in this state of flux, but can lead to considering new ways of being alive and humanists. The aim of this project was to explore walking through our associated psychogeographies as captured in photographs and text from individual walks, as the means by which to characterize responses to the distress of the pandemic and to assess resistance to non-being. The psychogeographies were the starting points for our dialogic enquiry between authors who each represent living theory, representing their own emergent knowledge, inseparable from personal commitments and history. Walking and the associated images and reflections, provided a way to regulate our affect, reconnecting with our bodies, leading to understand and adapt to new meanings of context and ways of coping and healing in this new becoming. The interdisciplinarity of philosophy, social psychology, botany, and clinical psychology is nonetheless rejected in favour of multi-vocality; each author representing their own emergent, living theory, inseparable from personal commitments, and history.

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“…The public discourse has largely made use of the rhetoric of the "war on virus" (Cohen & Kupferschmidt, 2020) in order to mobilize the appropriate collective behaviours, like voluntary isolation and social distancing. However, this rhetoric device has appealed to people feelings of fear (Tateo, 2019), rather than appealing to reflexivity and responsibility. This is why we have chosen to evoke the dimension of war in our experiment, by using also images of gas and military masks.…”

Section: Categories Buildingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Face masks as layers of meaning in times of COVID-19

Tateo

2020

Culture & Psychology

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The pandemic of COVID-19 has brought to the front a particular object: the face mask. I have explored the way people make-meaning of an object generally associated with the medical context that, under exceptional circumstances, can become a presence in everyday life. Understanding how people make meaning of their use is important. Using cultural psychology, I analyse preferences toward different types of face masks people would wear in public. The study involved 2 groups, 44 Norwegian university students and 60 international academics. In particular, I have focused on the role of the mask in regulating people affective experience. The mask evokes safety and fear, it mediates in the auto-dialogue between “I” and “Me” through the “Other”, and in the hetero-dialogue between “I” and the “Other” through “Me” The dialogue is characterized by a certain ambivalence, as expected. Meaning-making is indeed the way to deal with the ambivalence of human existence.

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“Atmos-fear”: A psycho-semiotic analysis of messages in New York everyday life

Cited by 4 publications

References 14 publications

The Pandemic Atmos-Fear

The Pandemic Atmos-Fear

Remaining Human in COVID-19: Dialogues on Psychogeography

Face masks as layers of meaning in times of COVID-19

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