Covid-19 and the Challenges of Trauma and Transformations - by Ananta Kumar Giri & Saji Varghese (Hardcover)

About the Book

Covid-19 has created trauma, death and destruction as well as challenged us for transformation of our existing society, economy and polity. The book deals with it.

Book Synopsis

This book unveils the challenges of living beyond Covid-19 navigating trauma, solidarity, and transformative futures.

The novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 emerged in the city of Wuhan in December 2019 and has then spread across all over the world. Its spread has created trauma, death and destruction on its trail. It has also brought to fore many other related issues such as endemic poverty, racism, structural inequality, aggression and authoritarianism. Societies and nations have responded to these with lock downs which many a time have been done, as in the case of India, in a haste without taking into consideration the plight of the migrant labourers. In the case of the USA, lock down in places such as New York State began much later. In the USA, there have been varieties of responses to the virus as well as the lockdown and as well as ways to open up economies and societies.

Living with and beyond COVID-19 raises these issues of trauma - trauma of the virus and the accompanying illness and disease as well as traumas such as authoritarianism, racism and poverty. But trauma is not just natural. It is constructed, and constructed trauma has the potential to make us aware of our common suffering, fight against both the natural virus and the social virus, and create responsibility and solidarity. Living with COVID-19 and beyond also raises questions of appropriate ethics, politics and spirituality. It invites us to understand the multiple strands of our present condition and understand the critical ontology and genealogy of our viral present. It also challenges us to cultivate pathways of alternative planetary futures. It is not just enough to speak about post-COVID futures. Post-COVID futures without transformation of our contemporary economic, political and social conditions would not necessarily be better compared to our present situation.

Review Quotes

"This courageous collection transcends both epidemiology and social engineering to treat the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity for building a new vision of globality, humanity and solidarity, in which trauma can become one of the ingredients of a politics of hope." --Arjun Appadurai, Emeritus Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University, USA.

"As humans disturb the delicate balance of life-supporting ecosystems, pandemics such as COVID-19, will become more frequent and take higher tolls on human health. It is vital that we learn from past pandemics to safeguard the health of humans and the planet. This volume takes us beyond technical management of pandemics, to a wide range of psychological, social, ethical, political and spiritual insights that can help us to live in harmony with nature, with beauty, dignity and dialogue. It's a very timely volume with deep insights." --Paul Shrivastava, Professor, The Pennsylvania State University, USA; Co-President, The Club of Rome, Italy.

"The book challenges conventional approaches to COVID-19 and encourages us to think about it and its implications for individual, community, society and the world in creative ways." --Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra, Professor of Political Science, Florida State College, Jacksonville, Florida, USA.

About the Author

Ananta Kumar Giri is a Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India.

Saji Varghese is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India.