Rethinking Society for a Post-Pandemic World | Überlegungen zur Gesellschaft für eine postpandemische Welt

Shaswati Mazumdar Announcement
Location
India
Subject Fields
Colonial and Post-Colonial History / Studies, Cultural History / Studies, Humanities, Philosophy, Social Sciences

International Conference of the Goethe Society of India

30 November – 2 December 2021

The pandemic that we are still living through has brought with it unprecedented changes, perhaps even a civilisational crisis. Unfolding much like a science fictional futuristic scenario with cities from which human beings seemed to have disappeared, the pandemic in fact accentuated ever more sharply the already existing faultlines of our globalised world. As country after country went repeatedly into lockdowns with ‘social distancing’ measures and economic life was disrupted, the ineptitude of states to control the spread of the virus, to protect people’s lives and safeguard their livelihoods was brought into sharp relief. As millions lost their jobs or faced steep wage cuts, as precarious forms of employment became ever more precarious, as schools and universities stopped functioning physically, depriving entire generations of children and young people of any effective education, as health systems broke down and the death toll mounted, entire societies seemed to be falling apart before our eyes. Climate breakdowns on an unrelenting scale have accompanied this revenge of nature.

Despite much talk about the urgent need for global solidarity and cooperation, the extreme inequities of collective human existence within and between countries have been exposed as never before. Paradoxically, ‘social distancing’ as a public health measure and a form of caring for others was accompanied by the increasing social distance in unequal societies and an inequitous global order. Divisive and sectarian ideologies and policies have compounded the injustices inflicted on people. Vaccines have brought temporary relief to a minority while their denial to countless millions in much of the developing world have left vast terrains for the virus to mutate in ever newer and deadlier forms. 

It is still uncertain when the pandemic is going to end but it has thrown up a range of questions about the future of humankind on this planet. Unlike any major crisis of the past, this pandemic has found its way to every corner of the world and its consequences will continue to be felt everywhere in the foreseeable future. Will the science fiction like events that we have been witnessing lead inevitably to a dystopian future, a chronicle of a death foretold? Are we to surrender in helplessness before a tiny invisible object that can bring all our institutions – industries  private and public institutions and infrastructures, trade, business, social life – to a standstill? The binaries that have dominated much critical thinking seem to have little to offer to comprehend a crisis of such global reach. Perhaps, as several thinkers have pointed out, the pandemic compels a paradigm shift in how we think of our way of being in the world, our attitudes to fellow human beings, to states as well as to the world and nature, to the establishment of social institutions – in politics, economy, science, education, etc. 

Any effort to analyse the turmoil and upheavals unleashed by the pandemic in our individual and social existence has to be directed to such rethinking. But to try to make sense of such a comprehensive crisis, we need to explore a wide spectrum of ideas. How have the different modes of expression of the human spirit – whether in philosophy, the social sciences, natural sciences, or in literature, cinema, art, whether as scientific analysis or as creative imaginings – responded to the crisis? What ideas do they propose for the future?The conference seeks to explore a spectrum of responses in an interdisciplinary framework. 

Abstracts (200-300 words) may be sent in English or German by 30 October 2021 to Jyoti Sabharwal, Secretary, Goethe Society of India at goethe.india@gmail.com. Given the circumstances, the conference will be held in virtual mode. 

Contact Information

Shaswati Mazumdar, President, Goethe Society of India, mazumdars@gmail.com

Contact Email
goethe.india@gmail.com