Heroism and/as injurious speech: Recognition, precarity, and inequality in health and social care work
借鉴巴特勒的理论，分析新冠疫情期间将健康与社会照护工作者称为“英雄”的话语如何实际上加剧了他们的不稳定性，并削弱其反抗能力。
Abstract This paper draws on Judith Butler’s (2009, 1997) writing on precarity and the interpellatory power of naming, read through her recent writing on the dynamics of recognition, vulnerability, and resistance, to develop a critique of the discourse of heroism used to position health and social care professionals, and other key workers, during the COVID pandemic. It does so in order to reflect on the insights into workplace inequalities that this example provides, in particular into what, to borrow from Butler, we might think of as the conditions necessary for a “workable life”. It argues that, although it might seem paradoxical, the heroic discourses and symbolism used to recognize health and social care workers throughout the pandemic can be understood as a form of “injurious speech” in Butler's terms, one that served to other key workers by subjecting them to a reified, rhetorical form of recognition. The analysis argues that this had the effect of accentuating health and care workers' precarity and of undermining their capacity to challenge and resist this positioning.