Brad Evans, writer for the LA Review of Books invited several critical thinkers, artists and poets to share their thoughts and concerns about COVID-19, including Cynthia Enloe.

‘It has sounded so normal: “We’re in a war zone.” “We’re all soldiers now.” “We’ll defeat this enemy.” None of us seems to be immune to drawing on the language of war to describe this current state of affairs and this odd new way of living. It’s as if wartime were the only remembered (even if vicariously) time that can provide us with the metaphors and similes we need to address the global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus. The virus is new. The scale of our collective effort to address it is new. But the linguistic repository we’re drawing upon to describe both is ancient — and unhelpful at best, risky at worst.’

Read Cynthia’s piece in full on the LARB website.