Uncanniness and Spatial Experience. A Phenomenological Reading of the COVID-19 Lockdown

The contribution deals, from a phenomenological stance, with three major characteristics of our experience of space and places during the COVID-19 pandemic: 1) the contrast between the unprecedented availability and diffusion of digital representations of elsewhere at the global level and the lockdown, connected with social distancing and confinement; 2) the unique correspondence between the subjective impossibility to visit places and the objective unavailability of places to be visited; and 3) the restructuring of the boundaries between home-world and alienworld. After COVID-19, our familiar world cannot be taken for granted anymore. “Uncanniness” shows the true nature of the world itself, inherently exposed to crisis and open to change.