Le mascherine tra materialità e agency ai tempi del Covid19. Riflessioni su un oggetto inquieto.

Abstract. The essay proposes a critical analysis, based on an ethnographic approach, on the facial protection devices (mascherine) introduced at a global level to face the Covid pandemic19. While reflecting on how masks are redefining interpersonal relations on a decorporealized basis, on their symbolic dimension, on the relationship with the mask and masking, the contribution focuses on masks as "(s)objects". Seen in their materiality, the masks are in fact proposed as emblematic "agent-objects", invested of a "thing-power" (Bennet 2004), to influence our behaviour. But also as "acted-objects ", with reference to human agency, to the human capacity to manipulate them, to reinterpret them in ironic and subversive forms.