CES (com)vida 2020

COVID 19 -When history has no lessons 

Gaëtan Thomas

Guillaume Lachenal

History Workshop

Overview

Guillaume Lachenal and Gaëtan Thomas put forward the challenging argument that the uniqueness of COVID-19 is such that the temptation to explain it using historical explanations or analogies with other epidemics or pandemics may be meaningless. And the authors' conclusion is instructive: COVID-19 is more of an "event" in the line described by Alain Badiou, characterised by its resistance to any pre-existing interpretative structures than as a necessary and teleological "plague" that our limitless world well deserved.
The limits of historical interpretations are the limit of one's own thinking and the power to think alternatives.