6 CHAPTER 1 Between the Economy and Everyday Life: A Revaluation of the Anthropocene City during the COVID-19 Pandemic 1 By Anton Heinrich Rennesland 1. Introduction The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a global standstill, and we are still currently experiencing a transition from life under lockdown to what possibly can be a post-pandemic reality. What we may observe from the entire pandemic period is a tug between understanding life from a macroscopic and a microscopic perspective: “As we continue to exterminate vast swaths of macroscopic life through this cutting of new connections, we are also creating new conditions for microscopic life to thrive” (Tanasescu, 2020a). In this essay, I try to situate these two perspectives through a switch between the macroscopic perspective of the Economy (superstructure) vis- à-vis the microscopic quotidian engagement among individuals (economy). I situate the former to be the force behind the Anthropocene condition of economic success at the expense of the environment. While the latter is the affected quotidian situation of both the human race and of the environment. The disruption this pandemic provides to the economic grammar of experience is an appropriate time for critical reflection on the hollowness of our current values in the Anthropocene. What is arguably needed is a revaluation of thought which I offer through Nietzsche’s (1974) ethical challenge of the eternal return coupled with Bruno Latour’s (2021) recent musings on the experience of metamorphosis during the lockdown. Following this introduction, the second part is an overview of the Anthropocene focusing on the experience of homelessness despite making a home out of nature. In the third part, I probe the pandemic’s effect and frame it as a disruption of the status quo created by the Anthropocene. Lastly, I provide a pandemic consideration following Friedrich Nietzsche and Bruno Latour on the possibility of a metamorphosis during the lockdown with due consideration to the eternal return.