Occupational Realism (Severance 2018)

In Ling Ma 2018 debut novel Severance, the world comes to an end without first coming to a halt. Shen fever has created something like a postural limbo, where fevered subjects rehearse endlessly everyday gestures and habits until their zombified body has been fully consumed by them, allowing infrastructures to collapse while crisis ordinariness endures. The horror is cautiously allegorical: if crisis ordinariness doesn’t lead to revolutionary action or at least something collective and aspirational, it is because Shen fever infected a world where work, the division of labor, and an all-encompassing supply chain are the main forms under which collective existence—and, conversely, a biographical sense of self-worth—is both organized and valued. It is that element in Ma’s script that achieved an anticipatory status in March 2020.