FF Network 54 (original) (raw)

Pandemic and the Fairy Tale Narrative

Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico

The article considers how the narrative of the pandemic has been developed, especially with regard to literature. The case study analyzed is the Italian novel L’assemblea degli animali, written by an anonymous author, whose penname is Filelfo. The article shows that the wide range of classical, literary and artistic references recognizable inside the text corresponds to a precise attitude of the ecologist culture, which is in search for traditional and elevated models to assert their ethical and political objective. The novel brings this directory to the point that it evokes an esoteric dimension of ecology. The article states that this stance is not serious, but ends into a literary game and feeds the needs for entertainment by the cultural industry, rather than giving any real contribution to the ecological question.

In Search of Hope amid Despair in Folklore of Epidemics

Journal of Folklore Research, 2023

Facing the outbreak of an unprecedented pandemic, along with a disturbing sociopolitical environment, folklorists should and can reflect upon what we have done within our discipline and what we can contribute to the discourse and public understanding of such realities with folkloristic perspectives. This introduction intends to define the study of folklore of epidemics as a new research area, building upon the studies of disaster folklore and ethnic minority folklore. It also discusses issues of marginalization, minoritization, and invisibility in folklore studies as a reflection of systemic racism in folkloristics as well as in broader society where the victimization of minorities and low-income class during the COVID pandemic has been ultimately exposed.

Covid-19 as a Zoonotic Moment: Placing the Animal at the Forefront of the History of Pandemics

Working Papers in Critical Disaster Studies, 2021

AbstractThe recent Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the fore the capacity of animals to cause disruptions to human affairs in the form of zoonoses, or diseases capable of animal-to-human transmissions. Many historians have documented zoonoses through the portrayal of animals as sources or vectors of disease, relegating the animals’ roles into the background of medical and pandemic histories. Yet, it is precisely this tendency that allowed for zoonotic diseases to emerge and be understood as solely attributed to animals, when, in fact, half of the transmission equation is due to anthropogenic activities. This essay seeks to redress this by placing animals at the forefront of histories of pandemics. Focusing on the rinderpest epizootic which had spread rapidly in Southeast Asia and the Philippines in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the essay highlights animals as embedded, transboundary, and historical within human relationships, systems, and structures. While rinderpest is epizootic (i.e., transmitted between animals) and affected only livestock, the disease brought much hardship to colonial economies and rice-based agricultural societies because of the dependence on animals. In this manner, this essay also suggests that more than as sources of diseases, animals ought to be considered as partners in the advancement of medicine and constitutive in understanding human health.

Nature Is Healing: Reading COVID-19 Narratives Through the Fantasy of Infinite Nature at Chernobyl

CR: The New Centennial Review, 2022

In August 2020, I found myself in Istanbul during a brief ebb between COVID-19 pandemic waves. The city was gripped with a heat wave that left its maskwearing citizens sweltering, and in an effort to escape the overwhelming grip of the sun I walked west along the northern coastline of the Sea of Marmara. The wind off the sea was cool, and Turkish families with small children waded in the shallows. The water was full of ghostly jellyfish. Suddenly a cry went up: The curve of a dolphin's back had been spotted. Then another; a third one. The pod of dolphins was diving for fish, herding its prey into the angle of an outcropping where the dolphins could feast at leisure. Later, I read in an article from Agence France-Presse that the dolphins had returned to Istanbul as a result of the coronavirus: "Dolphins swim in the Bosphorus as virus silences Istanbul" N a t u r e I s H e a l i n g 96 l (AFP New Agency 2020), the headline said. It was an example of a news genre that had emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, distinguished by the announcement that this-wild-animal-or-another had suddenly appeared in a space that had once been seen as resolutely de-wilded. Swans and fish retook the canals of Venice; wild boars and hawks frequented European cities; a small town in Wales was suddenly overtaken by goats. So frequent and so uncritically embraced were these stories that they spawned a sarcastic meme in which an image of a decidedly unnatural presence (e-scooters, photoshopped dinosaurs, or inflatable toys) is combined with a caption that reads: "Nature is healing. We are the virus" (Figures 1 and 2; see Bosworth [2021] for an analysis of this meme's subversive potential).

Contamination: The Case of Civets, Companionship, COVID, and SARS

Journal of applied animal welfare science : JAAWS, 2022

This research explores the intersection between zoonosis and the trade in wild animals by applying the Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) as a lens through which to analyse the ways humans and animals shape, and are shaped by, multi-species entanglements. Civets occupy a unique space within contemporary human-animal relations, as they have become an increasingly popular companion species despite being vectors of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus. The 2002 SARS outbreak not only killed 774 humans, but its confirmed species origin instigated the retribution-like public slaughter of an estimated 10,000 civets. Guided by the theory of "contamination", this paper compares human-civet relations during SARS and COVID-19 outbreaks through content analysis of global news media and the social media activity of "Civet Lover" clubs, dedicated social spaces for civet pet keeping enthusiasts. Results show that amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the civ...

Epidemic objects in museums. Cholera, storytelling and ecological disturbance

Nordisk Museologi, 2022

The Covid19 pandemic has made it painfully clear that global interconnectedness may explode in virulent contagion. Against this background, the article looks to another disease outbreak and engages an object from a historical cholera epidemic, namely a nineteenth century sealed flask containing gut secretion from a Nordic cholera patient. The so-called cholera bottle, now held in Copenhagen Medical Museion, works as an “epidemic object”, implying that its contents may spread along uncontrollable paths, producing and transforming nation states, medical frontiers, hotspots and havens along the way. Through open-ended fieldwork around the cholera bottle, pursuing unforeseen relations between then and now, here and there, and cholera and wider ecologies, the article suggests that such epidemic objects force us to pay acute attention to the choices that underpin museums’ storytelling. As such, the cholera bottle can point to highly problematic structures of global transmission – of scien...

Pandemic Protagonists. Viral (Re)Actions in Pandemic and Corona Fictions. Conference Report

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023

The interdisciplinary conference entitled Pandemic Protagonists. Viral (Re)Actions in Pandemic and Corona Fictions was held as part of the Corona Fictions project 2 from June 1 st to June 3 rd , 2023, at Graz University of Technology. It marked the culmination of a year of joint work on the recently published volume of the same title 3 , which stood at the center of the conference. Within this framework, the organising committee 4 invited all scholars whose contributions had appeared in the volume.

[Graphic Medicine] Anthologising COVID: An Interview with Kendra Boileau and Michael Green

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics , 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly one of the most significant bio-socio-economic crisis of the early 21st century. Amid the fear, anger, hope, anxiety, disorientation, and uncertainty of the times, Graphic Mundi published COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology (2021), and Distant Connections published a comic series titled The Lockdown Lowdown. COVID Chronicles, edited by Kendra Boileau and Rich Johnson, includes 64 mini-comics from 70 contributors and offers an insight into the various lived experiences of the pandemic. Similarly, The Lockdown Lowdown series comprising of two zines and a special issue (on women and COVID-19), features artists from diverse backgrounds and geographical locations (such as Europe, the USA, and China), exploring the challenges and possibilities within the new normal. Taking these cues, Kendra Boileau and Michael Green share their experience of anthologising COVID comics through an email interview. The interview is divided into two parts. In Part A, titled ‘Suddenly our world changed completely,’ Boileau and Green answer questions common to both of them, and in Part B, titled ‘When can we give grandad a hug?’ they answer questions specific to the anthologies in discussion while also giving the reader a peek into their creative/editorial processes.