Refused-knowledge during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mobilising Experiential Expertise for Care and Well-being

Since the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic concernedgroups of people have produced knowledge refused byinstitutional science of how to manage public health andindividual well-being in everyday pandemic life. Research inscience and technology studies seeks to understand thesocial and cultural conditions under which contestationover scientific knowledge claims occurs. In the Italian case,‘refused’knowledge claims emerging outsideinstitutionalised science play a performative role inquestioning the current models for managing individualand public health. Such refused claims ascribe novelmeanings to the COVID-19 pandemic and orient the waysin which people manage their own health and well-beingduring their everyday life. Two interrelated dimensions areat stake in the production and enactment of refusedknowledge: (1) how experiential expertise is mobilised toreframe one’s body in a process of self-care, thus validatinga corpus of refused knowledge through personalexperience, and (2) how narratives demarcate between abody of refused knowledge and the prevalent biomedicalparadigms as a way of gaining experiential epistemicautonomy.