Archiving the Pandemic
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.
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