Fear to Phobia: COVID-19 and Shifting Paradigm of Otherness in Bangladesh

Though the threat of COVID-19 knows no bounds of geography, race, ethnicity, class, age, gender, or status, the tendency to try to find a person or a group of people—the ‘Other’—to blame for causing this pandemic becomes appealing, out of the desire to protect ‘self’. With fear at the root, many such arguments have gone viral in social media and contributed to creating fear-based social spaces through placing ‘Others’ at the centre of their worries. While the social consequences of the virus containment measures have been starkly different for different classes, there were specific challenges faced by various sections of society. Disadvantages of wage-dependent workers, migrant workers, sex workers, transgender, other sexually diverse people, or minority people have grown further, as negative societal views like prejudice, presumption, fear and phobia have been re-articulated, further widening social division, marginalisation and hostility towards 'Others' in a new setting. Though in line with historic inequalities and prejudices, this othering does not seem to be historically situated or located, rather it is ongoing, making the emergence of new forms of othering always a possibility. Thus, the concept of othering we adopt in this article is not necessarily a product of a structure, but of a practice. That is, othering is not static here but fluid, and it is understood as a relational concept where the formation of the dominant individual or group is not fixed. Hence, this article analyses how the fear of COVID-19 has been felt as phobia in Bangladesh and examines how the paradigm of othering has shifted over time during the COVID-19 period. We have found that the existing power dynamics in the society play a vital role in suspecting ethnic groups, returnee migrants, sex workers, transgender, other sexually diverse people and labourers to be more likely agents and carriers of COVID-19.