Covid-19-The Great Reset (Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret, Forum Publishing 2020) illustrates the project of reconstructing the world after the Coronavirus (BC). I don't think that would be the world I would like to live in.
The point of observation: Schwab is founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum -the text is formally the WEF proposal for post-pandemic reconstruction and will be the focus of the Davos 2021 dialogues- while Malleret is manager of Monthly Barometer, predictive analytics companies for private investors and large corporations.
The Great Reset starts with a hasty and pedestrian excursus on the concept of complexity. And he immediately puts his feet on the plate: it's about "take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to reimagine our world. The post-pandemic era is barycentric on asustainable' economyreceptive to environmental issues, the main actor of which would be a "responsible capitalism.
Among the major sponsors of Great Reset Prince Charles of England, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and, first and foremost, the new US President Jo Biden with the watchword "Build Back Better"., rebuild better.
On the other hand, the project detractors: trumpiani- a good half of Americans regardless of the fates of Trump-, extreme right-wing supremacistsplotters at the QAnona share of conservatives in the USA and Canada. A broad line-up for which The Great Reset would be no more than a plan of the 'global financial elites for the control of states, creating a Marxist-ecological dystopia with severe restrictions on individual freedoms (of which the lockdown against Covid would be the dress rehearsal: worse, the pandemic was allegedly deliberately triggered in order to establish the new model) until property rights are abolished.
I can't find mine, ours women's space nor among the progressives of the Great Reset nor in the conspiratorial right. After all, it seems that the Great Reset does not concern us: women are mentioned incidentally and only once, as victims of the increase of domestic violence during the lockdown. The point of view is anachronistically and stubbornly neutral, as if the destruction of the planet, the omnipotence of the market in regulating human affairs, the financialisation of the economy, the damage caused by unregulated globalisation, the enrichment of the very few to the detriment of the very many (and in particular the very many) has not been and continues not to be an model conceived, supported and practised almost exclusively by male humans (+ a small host of handmaidens and epigones).
What is the basis for confidence that this model is capable of self-reform, producing responsible and sustainable capitalism? The only real basis, it seems to me, is the fear. Fear that injustice and inequality may undermine social cohesion to the point of risk of riots of which the Black Lives Matter movement has offered a taste. Revolts that could extend as far as jeopardise the monstrous and nonsensical profits of the fewThis is what counts.
"In the post-pandemic era" reads "ihe number of unemployed, anxious, miserable, resentful, sick and hungry people could grow by leaps and bounds". In such a world "ostentation of wealth would not be acceptable". And then there are the young people excluded from the market and politics who have started to mobilise again. The social contract could be broken.
We might as well make a virtue out of necessity, without deluding oneself about the possibility of a return to the "business as usual'.. And conceive a stakeholder capitalism in which all players - including workers - have a say, have a minimum of advantages and a few more guarantees, and in which production is not only more respectful of environmental balances, but is able to convert to more durable goods at a lower cost. widespread anti-consumerist sentiment.
"There is" reads "a collective awareness that without greater collaboration we will not be able to meet the global challenges we face... If we, as human beings, do not work together to confront certain existential challenges - the environment and the free fall of global governance, to name but a few - we will be doomed.".
And yet the fundamentals of "business as usual"growth, profit - remain exactly the same. Those must be saved at all costs, and how could it be otherwise?
The Great Reset is a classic case of T.I.N.A (There Is No Alternative) effectSomething has to change in order for nothing - or almost nothing - to change. The risk is that we will lose our lives, and the first to lose our lives will be those of us who have profited so much from so much injustice, from so much suffering of women and men. A timid reformism mandatoryjust the bare minimum. A bit like bicycle lanes in cities: better than nothing, even if they are at least a decade overdue. But this minimal reduction in damage - starting with the damage produced by the limitless globalisation that is at the root of populist and sovereignist resentment- is this really a solution? It may save the most profit: but what about our lives?
What we now call the economy is just a human male artefact. It does not realise natural and immutable laws, if anything it tries to subvert them by understanding them as limits and impediments to profit maximisation: one of the most striking and dramatic results of this subversion is precisely the situation we are experiencing. Maintaining the level of growth and profit remains the challenge universal both for the promoters of the Great Reset both for the opponents of the neo-neoliberal right. The world continues to be removed from the female gaze. Penelope has not yet arrived in Davos (Ina Praetorius). She is not yet allowed to 'reimagine the world'. Transformation does not take place not even on this extreme occasion. The "unexpected subject" which the laws of nature would have placed at the centre of the world, stays out of the scene.
The Great Reset warns that if something is not done the world could become "a very dangerous place"globalisation threatened by sovereignism and nationalism, the loss of power of international institutions, the new cold war between the US and China. Shared, borderless feminine wisdom, the true alternative to unbridled mercantile globalisation, is not taken into account at all. Real transformation is not in the plans. Ihe world continues to coincide with the economy. The salvation of the world with that of the "smoking dragon" (Guido Ceronetti). The gaze is and must remain the gaze neutral malein partnership with the hairy logic of the"inclusiveness'.What would be the point of referring to sexual difference when today we have the most functional "gender identity'.?
These are give up a marginal share of domain: "Covid-19 has rewritten many of the rules of the game between public and private. In the post-pandemic era, business will be subject to a 'new era'.greater government interference than in the past". For citizens (worker-consumers) it is a question of give up a further share of their freedom. They will be a little less exploited and a little more assured if they undergo a tracing & tracking perpetual, Chinese or Korean style (the style that the Shaman and his friends do not like). The world outlined by the Great Reset seems want to prolong indefinitely certain effects produced by anti-Covid strategies and doesn't look anything like that "change of civilisation" which we often talk about.
Two examples. The first has to do with the question of the health. Automation, digital and technological innovation will also affect care. The Great Reset the prospects of the telemedicine and imagine a kind of home console to be activated to get remote diagnosis and treatment (a large part of our lives will remain remoteeducation and work, 'social' life, cultural, recreational and sporting activities, we will continue to spend a good deal of time indoors). Returning to telemedicine: a logic of The total depersonalisation of care is the furthest thing from the female experience. No one knows better than women that the cure is in the body-to-body relationshipthat everything else - analyses, diagnostic devices, in a certain sense even drugs - are only means of the relationship that heals. Every man brought up and kept healthy by women has experience of this feminine wisdom. The Great Reset goes in a different direction.
The other example has to do with the tracing & tracking and with the good' capitalism and politically responsible. After the assault on Capitol Hill Facebook and Twitter have suspended indefinitely the accounts of Donald Trump. Through a compulsive use of social media, the outgoing president incited the rioters' square and the heads of the networks decided to take away their megaphoneAn emergency intervention that may appear to be common sense and in part certainly is. On Twitter Trump counted 81 million followers. But let's look at it for what it is: the owners of these colossal corporations have taken a decision of enormous political importance in complete autonomy. No one has ever nominated and elected Mark Zuckemberg, private entrepreneur who, among other things, has at his disposal billions of pieces of data on all of us: an update of Whatsupp is currently under way which will allow, at least in the US, better use of user data for marketing purposes. Yet Mark Zuckemberg, in total freedom, can take political decisions of global significance. Its companies will also be fairer, greener and more respectful of workers' rights, as called for by the Great Reset. But here we have a problem that cannot be ignored. The mechanisms of representation may be worn out and frayed, but they nevertheless seem to offer a few more guarantees than the 'no-holds-barred' approach.absolute arbitrariness of individual omnipotent private entrepreneurs. That Trump is off social media may be pleasing, but it has to be said that the same ostracization also happened, for example, to many feminists gender critical who resist single-mindedness, and always by the unchallengeable political judgement of the corporate masters.
The new post-Covid world outlined by the progressives of The Great Resetand which finds in Jo Biden its greatest political interpreter, does not resemble at all the change of civilisation we imagined.
Where, then, is our place as women? What is our plan for the world?
Marina Terragni
