Virality of Evil

Philosophy in the Time of a Pandemic

Divya Dwivedi

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Year: 2022
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9798881858155
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

Nearly two years on, the experiences and trajectories of the pandemic across the world have confirmed that it has been in the grasp of a systemic malaise, 'le mal'. Everywhere evil is as a viral condition: in the etymological sense of a poison and in the media-theoretical sense, in its uncontrollable spread, of a contagion.

It is time to revaluate the concept of evil, raising it as perhaps the only term through which philosophy can reflect on the pandemic. This collection contains responses from moral and political philosophy, epistemology, and ontology, literary studies, theology and psychoanalysis. It is a collective meditation which takes a plural approach to the sufferings of different parts of the world, deploying a stance dedicated to place and specificity.Their distinct contributions arise from multiple traditions, with voices from within and beyond the "western" canon. The eighteen mediations decline the temptation to isolate the pandemic as a simple great event, equal across the globe that it continues to devastate. Instead, like the witches of Macbeth, they come together as a gathering to speak of this state of evil, for it is our own condition. They explore the hesitating question, which yet confesses a terrifying suspicion: is it possible to speak of evil in the time of the pandemic?

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Acts of Evil: Part I
• Chapter 1: Up Against the Wall
• Chapter 2: Modals of Lost Responsibilities
• Chapter 3: Badly Exhausted
• Chapter 4: Mirages of the Act
• Chapter 5: Is Evil an Illusion?
• Part II: Who Is Evil: Part II
• Chapter 6: Evil, Time, Human
• Chapter 7: From Panic to Ecological Immunity
• Chapter 8: Life, Knowledge and Fear in the Context of COVID-19
• Chapter 9: ‘The World Is a Vampire’: Of Pandemics and Parasites
• Chapter 10: Vulnerability or Naked Life?: Political Imagination during the Pandemic
• Part III: Viral Discriminations, or Where Is Evil?: Part III
• Chapter 11: Sad Tropics, Sad Planet: COVID-19
• Chapter 12: Phobos: Evil and Urgency in a Conflictual Pandemic
• Chapter 13: It Would Be Nice to Testify That We Are Aware of Our Night
• Chapter 14: ‘Shuffering and Shmiling’: Life, Disease and Death in Burkina Faso
• Part IV: Sighting Evil 102: Part IV
• Chapter 15: The Proximity of Death and the Remoteness of Totality
• Chapter 16: ‘But (Let’s) Deliver Us from Evil’: From ‘Pandemic’ Evil to Evil as ‘Pandemisation’
• Chapter 17: Nature’s Revenge?: On the Coronavirus and ‘Natural Evil’
• Chapter 18: Don’t,: Or the Thought Cat’apostrophed
• Index
• About the Contributors and Translators