Marife Dini Araştırmalar Dergisi
Yazarlar: İ̇rfan KAYA
Konular:Din Bilimi
DOI:10.33420/marife.809997
Anahtar Kelimeler:Sociology of Religion,Mimesis,Mask,Alienation,Medicine
Özet: While the mask is a surgical object familiar to the medical world, it has become a global phenomenon at the time of the pandemic. As of 2020, it could be said that the struggle for survival has become synonymous with a mask. The mask is also one of the frequently used metaphors beyond being an ordinary object. When used as a metaphor, to mask something is the application of mimetic thinking in the history of thought. In mimetic thinking, the world of objects duplicates and masks the world of ideas. According to this thought, which was developed from the motive of "existing", there is a real world hidden behind the visible world. This practice of abstraction that inspires confidence seems to have found a great response in social practice. People are often in need of masking their own identities by imitating others in order to be accepted in the society. Therefore, it cannot be a coincidence that the word “persona” both meant face and mask in the history. However, the emergence of the persona with its mask is actually a case of alienation. Medicine’s mask which we all experience as a precautionary measure, in fact takes out the face-to-face communication. Medicine with its mask, suspends embodying by reducing the human being to a biological entity. Considering that secularization becomes visible especially through the body, the epidemic facilitates social regulation for medicine through individual bodies. This article investigates the homo duplex (paradox) form of relationship between mask and face and discusses the mask of medicine through zoe (vitality) and bios (lifestyle) as a biopolitical practice. In addition, it tries to question the "normal" before the "new normal life" symbolized by the mask with the archaeological method. The article consists of three parts. In the first part, mimetic (imitation) thought that shadows the sensory experience world through the mask metaphor is discussed. In this section, a critical approach is displayed against mimetic thinking that masks the world of objects by abstraction. In the second part the homo duplex nature of the word persona which covers both mask and face is examined. In the last part, body politics of both religion and medicine as a form are examined by transitioning to zoe, where it is reduced from the mask that creates proliferating objects to living creatures. The understanding of the word mask as a metaphor that hides the truth, especially in the Western thought tradition, stems from the deep rift Plato opened between truth and appearance. Although the Platonic metaphysical thought, which we can encode as the ideal / face-object / mask, points to the truth based on representation, it could not prevent the truth of representation and bowed to it. Just like Narcissus, who fell in love with his reflection in the water, drowning by falling into his own imago. After that big Fall, Mankind who was abandoned by his God and exiled to earth had to risk this in order to realize the Ideal-I. "To be or not to be." this is the greatest tragedy of the Christian Western world, which alienates itself while trying to exist. The mask, which we had to wear during the pandemic for medical reasons to protect ourselves from the epidemic, is a complete, as in Foucauldian terminology, biopolitical example that aims to regulate life by controlling the body. Apparently, these epidemic conditions, which bring extraordinary to mind, serve to make the panoptic management style even more visible. However, unlike other mask types, the mask of medicine is also devoid of any expression, even if it is permanent. Therefore, the area covered by the mask is indistinct. In this way, the human who is deprived of the most original communication tool becomes null. This state of nullification is explained by the zoe that Agamben has made the main target of Western politics since Aristotle. By wearing the mask, every human being is reduced to a pure biological entity, becomes the same and becomes uniform. A person who suffers a "loss of face" ends up alienated from himself. Under pandemic conditions, with the "mask of medicine" that reduces human to biological existence, the police host the zoe lifestyle limited by the interior of the oikos, and as a result, the "collapse of public man" takes place. When we evaluate today's actual issue in terms of alienation, which is one of the main issues of the sociology of religion, it can be said that according to Westerners, this process of alienation, which started with the exile of human beings to the earth, continues, and this state of mind, which the Western world has experienced since the beginning, has become a globally experienced phenomenon.