How the Covid story must be retold: The virus seems to be both a literary and scientific disaster which we need to re-read and invent in the years to come

CES (com)vida 2020
Dossiers Temáticos

CES (com)vida 2020

Shiv Visvanathan

DailyO

Overview

Shiv Visvanathan argues that we need a new story about the human experience of COVID-19, one that goes beyond a scientific, technocratic reading, or an economic cost-benefit assessment, that nullifies and dismisses the suffering, fear and fragility felt and experienced by the elders, the poorest, the most oppressed, the unwanted. Visvanathan says that we need another language to talk about the virus and the pandemic, a narrative that includes the human dimension of the tragedy, in its diversity and specificity, in its greatest brutalities and victories.

_{Image: The stories of vagrants, outcasts and migrants are dismissed or pulverized into a lower common denominator narrative. (Photo: Reuters)}