International Virtual Conference
Contagion Narratives: Society, Culture and Ecology of the Global South

Concept Note

The ‘outbreak narratives’ (Wald) emerging from across the globe afflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic have once again accentuated human vulnerability and have turned the spotlight back on the nonhuman (microbes, animals, climate and so on) and its ‘confederation of agencies’ (Iovino and Oppermann). The Corona pestilence, like its antecedents such as the Great Plague of London (1665-66), Spanish Flu (1918-1920), SARS (2002-2004) and Ebola (2013-2016), narrates ‘biological catastrophe[s]’ (Caduff) of varying degrees as it puts forward embodied discourses of pain, fear, fatigue, exhaustion and suffering. The permeability of bodies (Alaimo) that COVID-19 foregrounds has sharp parallels with the human survival struggles in the otherwise toxified locations like those near nuclear dumps, landfills and factories.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the fore astonishing discrepancies in response to the threat among different locations in the Global North and South. Emerging records of strategies and successes from different regions indicate that resourcefulness in handling the pandemic is not necessarily correlated with affluence or the availability of the best healthcare. The contagion that rapidly spread from China to Europe and the US, arguably, has effectively highlighted the flipside of both high capitalism and globalisation.

The extensive periods of nation-wide lockdowns in response to the pandemic have unequivocally demonstrated that environmental despoliation is largely anthropogenic. News reports from across the globe point to several instances of environmental recuperation such as drops in air and water pollution, fish returning to water resources and the sightings of birds and wild animals in cityscapes. The entanglement of such upbeat tales of ecological healing with stories of multiple socio-cultural problems like insanitation, stigma, unemployment, poverty, and migration that countries, mostly in the Global South, confront suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic ought to be seen as a ‘naturecultural’ (Haraway) phenomenon.

The tragic stories of deaths from COVID-19, which are increasingly becoming part of our everyday reality, make us reflect on the complex causal network that has led to the spread of this ‘zoonotic’ disease. The fact that the disease has spread from animals to human beings makes us think more closely about our relationship with members of other species. Our attitudes to other animals range from kindness and condescension to hostility and clash for resources. When they are experimented on, they serve as instruments to satisfy our quest to understand the secrets of life. This is one precise instance where this outbreak gives us a motivation for looking more closely at the relationship between us and other animals.

More questions arise as we take a look at the larger ecosystem on which the living world is dependent. It has been observed that the outbreak of this disease is concomitant with an increasing number of extreme climatic events and both are argued to be connected to global warming. As pathogens mutate and increasing temperatures create conditions for the increased breeding of disease vectors, infectious diseases could become deadlier and more difficult to contain. Further, owing to unhealthy living conditions and dependence on daily wages, socio-economically disadvantaged individuals of the Global South are more affected by infectious diseases in terms of health as well as their already low economic status.

As historian Yuval Harari noted, the virus SARS CoV 2 has affected aspects of our lives that make us human, such as the possibility of close communication in a direct, face-to-face mode. If infectious diseases become recurring phenomena in a world transformed by climate change, all aspects of human life, including our notions of literature, films and other forms of art, would have to be re-thought. The ways in which our forms of aesthetic expression respond and change would be a matter of interest to this conference.

Against this background, the two-day international virtual conference welcomes papers that analyses narratives from the Global South about deadly infectious diseases like COVID-19 by situating them in their wider medical (including biochemical), eco-social and cultural contexts. The conference is conceived as interdisciplinary and participants are encouraged to draw on theories ranging from the medical and environmental humanities, philosophy, gender, cultural and film studies, as well as various strands of social sciences.