A panel in the conference “THE RISE OF ASIA IN
GLOBAL HISTORY AND PERSPECTIVE: Covid-19 from Asia to the world: what
assessment and what perspective for a common future?” organised by the
University Le Havre Normandy, France, February 9-11, 2022
The panel is open to individual and group paper
presentations. Those willing to present their papers are invited to submit
online their 200-300 word abstracts until December 31, 2021. The introduction
and the guidelines to submit proposal are available online at https://bandungspirit.org/
From a historical and cultural point of view, the
Covid-19 Pandemic is one of those events that brought societies to put into
question and redesign their founding principles: The end of World war II, the
Fall of the Berlin Wall, etc. They are breaking points often seen through
eschatological lenses, meaning that the world system at that time has come to
its end. F. Fukuyama illustrates these end-time narratives with his praise of
liberal democracy and capitalism after 1989. On the other hand, these breaking
points are experienced with different cultural, political, spiritual tools from
a future-oriented perspective; this helps tackle collective global breaking
points with resilience and a mindset that expects life to breakthrough and
better times to come after the worst occurred.
This panel acknowledges the (Post)Covid-19 period as a
global breaking point; it aims to discuss the “End-time narratives” as a
“single-time” ideology, the neoliberal and western one. Based on the postulate
that these narratives have deep ideological and cultural roots, enhanced with
the argument of fear and suspicion towards alternative models, participants are
invited to expose alternative time experiences and imaginative visions of the
global future. The following questions may help orient proposals:
- What do Asian, African, or Latin American cultures
and societies have to propose in a (post)pandemic context, seen as a breaking
point in a globalised world?
- How do people imagine their future in the context of
collective crisis? With which concepts and understanding of time, resilience,
hope, future do they tackle negative issues such as pandemic, natural
disasters, genocide, etc.
- What kind of myths, legends, and spiritual
frameworks are mobilised to deal with historical breaking points? How do these
resources help to interpret them constructively and imagine a future world?
- What ideological, political, and economic
projections and utopias have been or could be developed, once collective crises
are no more considered from an eschatological perspective, but rather as the
beginning of something potentially new and better than the previous state of
things?
Panel Convenor:
Isaac Bazié, Professor of Cultural and Literary
Studies, Director of Laboratoire des Afriques Innovantes (LAFI), Chief
Editor of Journal Afroglobe: African Issues in local and global Perspectives,
President of Canadian Association of African Studies (CAAS)
Université du Québec à Montréal,
Canada