COVID-19 and the emotional culture of pandemics: a retrospective and prospective view.
Taking fear as the core emotion in the experience of major disasters and echoing French historian Jean Delumeau's classic thesis on the social and cultural construction of coping strategies against it, this article outlines some lessons and prospects from the (complex but also distinctive) regime of...
| Published in: | Paedagogica Historica Vol. 58; no. 5; pp. 660 - 676 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Oct2022
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=160114202&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 160114202 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00309230 J54 jtl: Paedagogica Historica issn: 00309230 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Oct2022 vid: 58 iid: 5 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 160114202 10.1080/00309230.2021.2008993 ppf: 660 ppct: 16 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 352KB tig: atl: COVID-19 and the emotional culture of pandemics: a retrospective and prospective view. aug: au: Novella, Enric J. affil: López Piñero Interuniversity Institute for Historical and Social Studies on Science, University of Valencia, Spain su: Pandemics History Emotions Emotional trauma Coronavirus diseases sug: subj: Pandemics History Emotions Emotional trauma Coronavirus diseases keyword: COVID-19 emotions fear history pandemics trauma ab: Taking fear as the core emotion in the experience of major disasters and echoing French historian Jean Delumeau's classic thesis on the social and cultural construction of coping strategies against it, this article outlines some lessons and prospects from the (complex but also distinctive) regime of experiences and behaviours historically configured in the West when facing severe epidemic outbreaks. The analysis of observations and testimonials reported in various sources (literary works, chronicles, medical treatises, autobiographical records, etc.) on the devastations of plague from the fourteenth century onwards, the different cholera waves in nineteenth-century Europe, or the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919, allows indeed identifying the most conspicuous elements of this regime. This set of experiences and behaviours includes – sometimes following a certain chronological order but also coexisting over several weeks, months, or even years – a particular succession and blend of denial, panic, insecurity, uncertainty, mistrust, loneliness, heroism (as well as cowardice), feelings of punishment, scapegoating, hedonistic excesses, discouragement, and even madness and mental derangement. Given the strong emotional and psycho(patho)logical impact of the COVID-19 pandemic according to all major international health organisations and the remarkable recurrence (at least in Western countries) of similar reaction patterns at both the individual and the collective level, it seems reasonable to expect that this traumatic and sudden recovery of the cultural memory of epidemic diseases will have important consequences for our self-understanding as secular risk-managing societies involved in a peculiar and surely growing relationship with fear. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Paedagogica Historica is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Paedagogica Historica holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2022 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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