key: cord-0976861-qs21xj5k
authors: Canals, Roger
title: Dealing with the unexpected: new forms of mytho‐praxis in the age of COVID‐19
date: 2020-05-20
journal: Soc Anthropol
DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.12808
sha: abfcfc50d3f6fe74716df88d2f0b64c73c6b67f0
doc_id: 976861
cord_uid: qs21xj5k

nan

Dealing with the unexpected: new forms of mytho-praxis in the age of No one really thought this was going to happen -at least, not like this or at this historical moment. Though the eventuality of a global pandemic had been imagined -and even predicted -by different agents (scientists, artists, leaders of so-called 'new religious movements'), COVID-19's global irruption has been experienced by most of the population (including anthropologists) as a totally unexpected event. It has confronted us with the idea of the 'unexpected' in all its radicality. COVID-19 cannot be compared with our prior experiences. Economic crises, global terrorism and even mass health catastrophes occurring beyond the borders of the 'West' were foreseeable events fitting easily into what we conceived of as potentially possible -and could thus be explained by historical causality. In contrast, COVID-19 seems to obey a blind force beyond human control and understanding -a force beyond history. This new paradigm prompts us to undertake what we might call 'ethnographies of the unexpected' aimed at understanding how people from different social and cultural milieus categorise unforeseeable historical disruptions and performatively react vis-àvis to their phenomenological emergence.

One domain these ethnographies should focus on is mythology. Let us define 'myth' as a sacred or meta-historical narrative, always in motion, which recounts the beginning of Time or, more generally, the relationship between opposing domains of reality (Life and Death, Men and Gods, 'Nature' and 'Culture'). Thus, a myth always addresses a moment of 'ontological redistribution': it narrates how things cease to be what they are and become something else -by maintaining some of their previous properties. Almost 40 years ago, Shalins (1985) highlighted that the irruption of unexpected events (such as the one we are experiencing) may spark processes of 'mythopraxis' -that is, creative efforts for making sense of history by transforming previous mythological models.

COVID-19's sudden, catastrophic effects have raised certain unsolvable questions: how can this have happened? Whose responsibility is it? What will our future be like? We feel poised on the threshold of a new age. Thus, new forms of mytho-praxis emerge: we have all heard the 'theory' claiming that COVID-19 was fabricated by a conspiracy willing to sacrifice part of the population (the elderly). We need to find a subject of agency of these events, thus turning the unbearably random nature of the pandemic into a political -and therefore human -affair. Another 'explanation' that has invaded the Internet and 'common parlance' is that this virus is Nature's response to the aggressions we have continuously heaped upon it. Here the classical theme of divine punishment is readapted within the context of current environmental concerns. Some forms of this mytho-praxis become visual and digital -hence the myriad of videos, collages and memes circulating on social networks. The satirical cartoon showing wild animals living in towns like humans while the latter are locked in their apartments can be interpreted as a new version of the classic mythological theme of ontological inversion between humans and non-humans.

Myth therefore is a dispositive for generating alternative modes of explanation and action and possible future scenarios in times of radical incertitude.

Islands of history