Narrative and Imagination in Times of Global Pandemics

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F67985955%3A_____%2F24%3A00586170" target="_blank" >RIV/67985955:_____/24:00586170 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350277243.0012" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350277243.0012</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350277243.0012" target="_blank" >10.5040/9781350277243.0012</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Narrative and Imagination in Times of Global Pandemics

Original language description

In this chapter, we propose to examine health care narrative and imagination as related to the phenomenon of a global pandemic, such as the Covid-19 outbreak. We will briefly discuss a few examples of global pandemics, including, Covid-19, the SARS outbreak of 2002-4, and the swine flu (H1N1) outbreak of 2009-10. In the first part of this chapter, we will argue that all these global pandemics can be characterized by a certain kind of narrative identified as a blame narrative (Dry and Leach 2010, Kapiriri and Ross 2020, Pop 2021, Dierckxsens 2023). The blame narrative is defined as that which “reflects the politics of blame, which typically attributes responsibility for the sources of the outbreak [of a pandemic] to a cultural minority group” (Kapiriri and Ross 2020, 34). We could think for instance of the targeting of Asian Americans during the first Covid-19 outbreak, but we have also witnessed that of other social groups. For example, young people were blamed for spreading Covid 19 after lockdowns. In the second part of this chapter, we will demonstrate how imagination also can play a more positive role in pandemic management. To do this, we will are established coin the term imaginative plasticity, based on Malabou’s notion of plasticity andon Ricoeur’s concept of imaginative variations (Malabou 2012, Ricoeur 1992). We start from the assumption that plasticity and imagination are essentially interconnected, which can take negative or positive forms. While plasticity is commonly understood as a capacity to take up a new form, which could also be a form of experience, Malabou suggests it is necessary to differentiate between constructive and destructive plasticity. Destructive plasticity develops when we are trapped in trauma. Constructive plasticity manifests itself at moments when trauma is managed and successfully overcome. Creative adaptation to a traumatic event opens up new, often previously unexpected, possibilities for individual existence and coexistence with others. Destructive plasticity is a response to a life break represented by a traumatic event, but it does not allow for a process of moving on. Here, life’s fracture is preserved and continually reiterated as an inevitable fate. It is our intention to demonstrate that imagination is involved in both destructive and constructive plasticity.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

C - Chapter in a specialist book

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60302 - Ethics (except ethics related to specific subfields)

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2024

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Book/collection name

The Philosophy of Imagination. Technology, Art and Ethics

ISBN

978-1-3502-7721-2

Number of pages of the result

14

Pages from-to

98-111

Number of pages of the book

246

Publisher name

Bloomsbury

Place of publication

London

UT code for WoS chapter

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