The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Failure of Narrative Imagination (European NetIAS Lectures)

Narrative imagination brings into focus three key issues: 1) temporal fluidity, or ‘time traveling’ in which the past, present and future are intricately and repeatedly interwoven; 2) the relationship between the real, the not-real, and the not-yet-real; and 3) the complexity of constructing ‘the other’.  Using this framework, I examine the current pandemic as a failure of the narrative imagination: we are now tasked with re-imagining our lives, and our once hoped for futures, and forced to re-examine the past that has led us to this crisis. The hope for the future depends upon a rethinking of our past.

The link to the lecture: Europen NetIAS Lecture ZOOM