COVID – 19: A Critical Ontology of the present¹

Abstract

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

Notes

Notes

1 The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for offering a spirited critique of this paper. This paper reclaims its theoretical rigorousness, if any, and remodels its philosophical outline from their incredibly useful insights. We would like to thank Susanne Brighouse and Micheal Peters, for encouraging us to proceed with confidence and certainty against what Peters calls the ‘anxieties of knowing (2014)’.

2 http://www.revistaikaro.com/slavoj-zizek-coronavirus-is-kill-bill-esque-blow-to-capitalism-and-could-lead-to-reinvention-of-communism/.

3 A term used one of the reviewers that helps address the question of colonial difference

4 https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/coronavirus/venice-canals-clear-dolphins-swim-italy-lockdown/

5 Novels and films that are “overtly preoccupied with financial panic and economic crisis.” (Ibid.)

6 Word between brackets is ours.

7 The use of the pronouns ‘we’ and ‘our’ are used in toward the end of the text not to negate our divided humanity, but to call attention to our global common knowledge of what is going around, that we have encountered in literatures, movies, religious texts, folktales, and even our most instinctive existential soliloquies.

8 Plural form and italicization are ours, to fit the overall spirit of the piece.

9 https://www.versobooks.com/events/139-conversations-with-slavoj-zizek-the-situation-is-catastrophic-but-not-serious

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Moulay Driss El Maarouf

Moulay Driss El Maarouf completed his PhD on The Local and Global Dynamics of Moroccan Music Festivals in 2013 in Bayreuth University (Germany), where he was on the BIGSAS and DAAD scholarships. After defending his thesis, he was awarded a three-year postdoctoral grant by the Volkswagen foundation to complete his research project: Remembering Childhood: Identity, Space, and Circulation in Childhood Playing Narratives. Towards the end of this fellowship, he joined the DAAD research program “The Maghreb in Transition: Media, Knowledge and Power” as coordinator and academic advisor from 2016 to 2019. In 2020, he co-founded AfriBIAN (Africa Bayreuth International Alumni Network), after a successful application to DAAD to fund a two year project, entitled: Rolling Religion on the African Map: Religion in times of Transition. El Maarouf’s academic interests span several topics within Cultural Studies, including cultural theory, music festivals and sub-culture, childhood lives, social movements, scatology and popular culture. El Maarouf currently holds a teaching position at the English Department at Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University (Sais), Fez.

Taieb Belghazi

Taieb Belghazi earned his PhD in 1993 from the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory at Cardiff University where he was a Chevening scholar. He later held a Fulbright postdoctoral scholarship at Duke University and was a member of the UNESCO-sponsored International Panel on Reading for All. He was director of the Centre for Doctoral Studies: The Human and Space in the Mediterranean (2010–2015) and served as a professor of cultural studies and history of the present at the Faculty of Letters in Rabat for many years. He has also been a visiting professor at a number of universities, including Duke University; the University of California, Irvine; and the Ferguson Centre for African Studies and Asian Studies at the Open University, England. He is currently a member of the research center The Human, Languages, Cultures & Religions at the Faculty of Letters in Rabat and the Academic Director of The School for International Training Program 'Multiculturalism and Human Rights' in Rabat and Academic Director of the Multiculturalism and Human Rights (The School of International training) in Rabat. Dr. Belghazi has been a consultant for a number of projects, including the project Diaspora as a Social and Cultural Practice (The University of Southampton) and the UNESCO project on reconceptualizing Mediterranean dialogues. He is a member of the editorial boards of the periodicals Time and Society (England), Current Writing (South Africa), and Al Azmina Al Haditha (Morocco). He has published a number of writings on social movements, the politics of identity, and global/local dynamics. His current research centers on the politics of social movement and emotions. His publications include The Idea of the University (editor), Time and Postmodernism, Dialogues Khatibi and Weber (editor).

Farouk El Maarouf

Farouk El Maarouf is a fellow of the Center of Moroccan Cultural Studies at Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fez. Farouk is on the ERASMUS + scholarship studying British and Irish Cultural Studies at Babes-Bolyai University, and doing research on alternative economies, risk society, local art markets and treasure hunting in Morocco. Farouk's other research interests comprise gender politics, street art, maghribian literature, diaspora studies, youth and activism. Besides, Farouk is a portrait artist and a creative writer.