Affective Desire of Lack/Absence in Dementia Care in the Pandemic: a Case Study of a Care Worker in Korea

This study analyzes the affective desires of care workers facing situations of care injustice, in which adequate compensation and social protections are lacking or absent. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the moral breakdown that calls for caring for others while setting aside the health and safety of oneself and their family. This study details a conversation with a care worker who struggled to work while moderating and abstaining from politicizing the above-mentioned issues. In this process, the ontological, ethical, and political struggles of the care worker are tracked, mapped, analyzed from the perspective of affect. Accordingly, this study exposes invisible techniques of neo-liberalism that are internalized in her daily life and labor. Furthermore, the trajectory of affective desires as an ontological force was analyzed. In doing so, it is possible to suggest connection and solidarity with other affective beings, which are fragile, but are constantly revealed with generative differences in the process of co-corresponding and attuning, rather than being tamed by absence.