COVID-19: uncertainty in a mood of anxiety
| Author | Bahar Rumelili |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221149636 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Forum on COVID-19 and Anxiety in International Relations |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221149636
International Relations
2023, Vol. 37(1) 149 –155
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178221149636
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COVID-19: uncertainty in a
mood of anxiety
Bahar Rumelili
Koç University
Abstract
This contribution to the Forum, Anxiety and possibility: the many future(s) of COVID-19,
develops a conception of uncertainty as constituted by cognitive (awareness of possibilities) and
affective (mood in which possibility is encountered) dimensions. Based on this conception, it is
suggested that the COVID-19 crisis has led to a qualitative leap in our already growing sense of
uncertainty, both accentuating our awareness of possibilities that are unforeseen, and rendering
us attuned to the world in anxiety rather than fear.
Keywords
COVID-19, crisis, emotions, existentialism, uncertainty
While COVID-19 is neither the first nor the deadliest pandemic to confront humanity, a
shared sense of living through unprecedented times has captured people to a degree than
ever seen before in recent memory. Like the world in general, mainstream IR theory,
which had heretofore limited its conception of uncertainty to the contingencies of state
behavior, was caught unprepared. While critical security theorizing had drawn ample
attention to the social construction and political instrumentalization of risks – contingen-
cies with knowable and calculable probabilities, the COVID-19 crisis has provided an
unquestionable wake-up call to engage more thoroughly with more fundamental uncer-
tainties, in the form of unanticipated contingencies, in IR. In this short essay, I will start
by briefly discussing how the conception of uncertainty in the IR literature is largely
limited to the known unknowns of interstate behavior. I will then build on the existential-
ist notion of anxiety and the developing literature on it in IR to tease out different types
and levels of uncertainty. On that basis I will argue that COVID-19 led to a qualitative
leap in our already growing sense of uncertainty, both accentuating our awareness of
Corresponding author:
Bahar Rumelili, Department of International Relations, Koç University, Rumelifeneri Yolu, Sarıyer, Istanbul
34450, Turkey.
Email: brumelili@ku.edu.tr
1149636IRE0010.1177/00471178221149636International RelationsRumelili
research-article2023
COVID-19 and Anxiety
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