The dithering pandemic

2020 has seen the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than portraying this global event simply as a human health emergency or as a recourse to existential seclusion, isolation, and probable despair, this chapter will examine the pandemic through the notion of ‘dithering’. The notion of dithering is made explicit through various conceptual and intellectual contributions, such as ‘stuttering’ from Deleuze, ‘trembling’ from Guattari’s analysis of schizophrenic affect, ‘twittering machines’ from Paul Klee (and Jean Tinguely), Bataille’s concept of ‘base materialism’, early Nick Land’s libidinal dynamics, and Klossowski’s simulacrum. The point of the conceptual construction of the notion of dithering for the pandemic is to escape the way in which this moment will be hijacked and co-opted by global capitalism to make a profit, and hence the impetus to think will be forgotten. Dithering acts as this escape route and as ‘white noise’ to be broadcast through today’s technological systems, to enact Guattari’s notion of postmedia and to reconnect with the Anthropocene.