MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-04-30 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] =?utf-8?q?COVID_=E2=80=93_19=3A_A_Critical_Ont?=
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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2020.1757426
COVID-19 has crowned1 a number of other disasters (wildfires in
Australia, Desert Locusts in Kenya, an imminent WWIII merging Iran and
the US), causing panic to click into place and horror to become our
global predicament, making us realize that we live in the illusion of
the permanence of things, of mastery, and of immortality. People’s
turning to social media for trans-local news on COVID-19 has stirred
great ire in the world. This led to the proliferation of dark images
that associate the viral catastrophe with the end as we know it. To
problematize the idea of the apocalypse (or the end) this paper speaks
of three moments of survival in human existence: the beneath, the behind
and the beyond. We argue that the apocalyptic nature of the pandemic and
its global horrorism are part of a congeries of apocalyptic simulations
that have always been part of the narrative with which we try to define
ourexistence on earth. This paper masks itself against perfunctory
examinations of the term apocalypse, and offers instead an understanding
that runs along the lines of its Greek etymological sense as
apokalyptein (revelation). It offers what Foucault calls an ontology of
the present, that interrogates the history of COVID -19 with an emphasis
neither on its origin nor on its telos. As beyondists, the COVID-19
catastrophe has revealed to us that 1) we have ‘access to knowledge
beyond knowledge’ (see Gumpert 2012), and therefore that 2) our modern
predicament is not very modern. The end, (not) to be sure, has been
lived and relived in the boundary between reality and simulation. After
all, the end of something comprises the beginning (in reverse) of that
which “endeth”, throwing the beyond, behind and beneath in the Ferris
wheel of epistemological and existential entanglement.
Keywords: Apocalypse, COVID-19, the end, pandemic, simulation, the beyond
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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