News
11.07.2020
Coronavirus: what narrative for a pandemic?
Blog article by Ameline Vandenberghe
Countless accounts of the reality of COVID-19 have been made since the beginning of its outbreak. The political response itself has varied over time and from one country to another, from disregarding the virus as a “distant foreign health issue” to declaring war on an “invisible enemy”. This reinforced a feeling of distrust in the received information, political discourses and containment measures among some populations, driving certain persons to alternative narratives which include problematic conspiracy theories. This article proposes to review how these stories provide a legitimization to uncooperative attitudes such as anti-lockdown protests by fashioning them “movements of resistance”. Its main argumentation is based on the premise that human actions can be understood by apprehending the narrative by which people live. It also recalls the function of narration in order to question and better define our current approach to narratives and reality.