Description
As politics continue to seep further into the engagement with the current pandemic, the chapter is drawing on our experience with social tensions during this time to weave a narrative to describe from cultural analysis how we react to precarity in order to better understand the transformations affecting our societies because of it: precarity and inequity. COVID-19 has definitely put the spotlight on social inequalities that are underpinning our society and it has highlighted new forms of oppression too. Inequity ingrained in our societies well before Coronavirus, it is now casting a different shade highlighting the pandemic as a political issue. Covid-10 is a global issue but it is also important to see how it is locally specific too. This chapter is addressing a range of political perspectives of the lived experiences in and through social space with examples of narratives in language which capture the everyday political experiences of the pandemic within Europe. Looking in specific at the cultural attitudes of the post vaccine era (i.e. the vaccine denialism, alarmism, the policy proposals to pay people to get the vaccine), as well as the kind of language used and its profound effect on the growing discourse regarding social health is the main focus here. I explore the intertwine of language and politics during the pandemic and bring out the countervailing narratives that seem to be in constant tension. I then ask where does this take us, not only in terms of scholarship and expansion of knowledge, but also with a pragmatic edge to it, trying to figure out how it may be possible for us to achieve a sort of cognitive shift in our approach in order to ponder on the question what do we learn from this challenge with regards demands for rights and equity.
