Mandy Brown’s reading note about Caliban and the Witch, on changing attitudes towards work during the Black Death:
The layoffs, the strikes, the return-to-office plans, the renewed efforts to police women’s bodies–all are of a piece with capital’s response to a pandemic, whether that pandemic started centuries ago or this decade. Maybe history will repeat itself. But we have an advantage our predecessors did not: we have their history to learn from.
We have their history to learn from, not just in how we act, but also in what reactions we can expect. We should listen well.