Female Guilt and the Need for Productivity in Quarantine: an Autoethnographic Reflection.

Abstract

This essay is an autoethnographic reflection on female guilt during the quarantine situation caused by the covid-19 pandemic. Crossing the issue of guilt through the concept of the female superego suggested by Nora Levinton (1999), which imposes care mandates on women, I analyze the logic of productivity denounced by Byung-Chul Han (2018a) and other authors, that encourages the creation of neoliberal performance subjects, people who become entrepreneurs of themselves, who explore themselves voluntarily and passionately. It is a reflection written in first person, in an almost confessional tone and carried out at the specific moment of compulsory confinement, dealing with questions such as: Is guilt exclusive to women, or does it appear in a different way in women? Are all women bullied in the same way for guilt? What guilt are we talking about? What situations can reinforce guilt in quarantine? Can we take advantage of the quarantine to change issues such as guilt? It is a testimony about guilt from a female perspective, including the issue of motherhood, care with the body, aesthetics, situations of privilege and vulnerability and the influence of social networks, particularly Instagram, during the pandemic of the coronavirus. As it is an autoethnography, it rejects the need for closure or fixed conclusions, but shows that the burden of productivity is not something that concerns one individually, but society, in a general way. Just as the guilt linked to the mandates of care is something that continues in female education, despite the advances of feminism.