“Because Survival is Insufficient”: Pandemic Narratives in the 21st Century | ||
| Cairo Studies in English | ||
| Article 11, Volume 2021, Issue 2, December 2021, Pages 189-205 PDF (282.79 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/cse.2022.45581.1067 | ||
| Author | ||
| Yasmine Ahmed Sweed* | ||
| Faculty of Languages, October University for Modern Sciences and Arts (MSA), Giza, Egypt. | ||
| Abstract | ||
| The paper explores the configuration of pandemics in Such Is This World@sars.come (2011) by Chinese writer Hu Fayun and Station Eleven (2014) by Canadian American author Emily St. John Mandel to examine the paradigm shifting effect of disease on people’s ideas, beliefs, value systems, social structures, as well as political and religious entities. The researcher chose these texts because the literature that arose as a response to previous pandemics reverberates into the present and speaks to the current moment in deep and insightful ways, helping people make sense of the challenges of COVID-19. The paper maintains that pandemic literature holds up a mirror to the readers’ deepest and most pressing concerns about the present moment and examines diverse possible responses to those fears. Moreover, it shows them that the boundaries that people use to structure society are fragile and unstable. Accordingly, the paper attempts to position the two novels as a response to and a repository of 21st century fears about globalization, state hegemony and surveillance, people’s increasing reliance on technology and community identity. The paper argues that while pandemic literature as a genre might initially seem as relevant only to its particular moment of production and consumption as it addresses specific kinds of medical fears, a deeper look reveals it has boundary crossing capabilities as it reflects multifaceted, wider reaching human concerns. Hence, one can argue that pandemic literature can be viewed as a repository of both archetypal, primordial concerns about human survival and extinction, as well as time specific and culture-bound fears. The paper maintains that in addition to their delineation of tangible medical threats, these texts allow their authors and readers to think about unsettling questions about the human condition and what it means to be human even amid the anticipation of extinction and which human traits are deemed as worthy of protection, continuity and/or sacrifice. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Pandemic literature; apocalyptic literature; value of art and technology; survival; surveillance and Foucault’s Plague Model | ||
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