-
oa Pandemic temporalities: Distal futurity in the digital Capitalocene
- Source: Journal of Environmental Media, Volume 1, Issue s1, Jun 2020, p. 13.1 - 13.8
Abstract
This article situates the cultural significance of COVID-19 at the intersection of critical conversation around capitalism, the digital and the environmental – fields where time and temporality are key elements to understanding what it means to imagine futures in an unequal, uncertain and alienated world. It argues that the exponential proliferation of digital lifeworlds during COVID-19 is symptomatic of deeper disjunctive temporalities symptomatic of late-stage capitalism. This article further considers if ‘pandemic temporality’, experienced through rapidly expanding virtual worlds (or digital Capitalocenes), takes us further away from becoming contemporaneous with inhabited ecological time. It also examines how the very asynchronicities of digital lifeworlds may show us possible alternatives to capitalist temporalities through contemporaneous and collective activism.