Skip to content
1981
Volume 1 Number Supplement 1
  • ISSN: 2632-2463
  • E-ISSN: 2632-2471

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.

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND). To view a copy of the licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/jem_00034_1
2020-06-01
2024-12-10
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/jem/1/s1/jem.1.supp.13.1_Chan.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1386/jem_00034_1&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

References

  1. Bellar, Jonathan. ( 2003;), ‘ The cinematic mode of production: Towards a political economy of the postmodern. ’, Culture, Theory & Critique, 44:1, pp. 91106.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. ( 2009;), ‘ The climate of history: Four theses. ’, Critical Inquiry, 35:2, Winter, pp. 197222.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Chotiner, Isaac. ( 2020;), ‘ A Black Lives Matter co-founder explains why this time is different. ’, New Yorker, 3 June, https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-black-lives-matter-co-founder-explains-why-this-time-is-different. Accessed 30 June 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Chun, Wendy. ( 2016), Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media, Cambridge, MA:: The MIT Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Fay, Jennifer. ( 2018), Inhospitable World, Oxford:: Oxford University Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Fuchs, Christian. ( 2015;), ‘ The digital labor theory of value and Karl Marx in the age of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Weibo. ’, in C. Fuchs, and E. Fisher. (eds), Reconsidering Value and Labor in the Digital Age, New York:: Palgrave;, pp. 2641.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Gurvitch, Georges. ( 1964), The Spectrum of Social Time, Dordrecht:: D. Reidel;.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Hagglund, Martin. ( 2008), Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life, Stanford:: Stanford University Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Harvey, David. ( 1989), The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Cambridge, MA:: Blackwell Publishers;.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Hassan, Robert. ( 2007;), ‘ Network time. ’, in R. Hassan, and R. E. Purser. (eds), 24/7: Time and Temporality in the Network Society, Stanford CA:: Stanford Business Books;, pp. 3761.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Jameson, Fredrick. ( 1997;), ‘ Culture and finance capital. ’, Critical Inquiry, 24:1, Autumn, pp. 24665.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Jones, Bethany L., and Jones, Jonathan S.. ( 2020;), ‘ Perspective: Gov. Cuomo is wrong, COVID-19 is anything but an equalizer. ’, Washington Post, 5 April, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/05/gov-cuomo-is-wrong-covid-19-is-anything-an-equalizer/. Accessed 7 June 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Klein, Naomi. ( 2007), The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Toronto:: Alfred A. Knopf Canada;.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Le Quéré, Corinne,, Jackson, Robert B.,, Jones, Matthew W.,, Smith, Adam J. P.,, Abernathy, Sam,, Andrew, Robbie M.,, De-Gol, Anthony J.,, Willis, David R.,, Shan, Yuli,, Canadell, Josep G.,, Friedlingstein, Pierre,, Creutzig, Felix, and Peters, Glen P.. ( 2020;), ‘ Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 forced confinement. ’, Nature Climate Change, 19 May, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0797-x. Accessed 7 June 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Lowrey, Annie. ( 2020;), ‘ Don’t blame Econ 101 for the plight of essential workers. ’, The Atlantic, 13 May, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/why-are-americas-most-essential-workers-so-poorly-treated/611575/. Accessed 6 June 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Moore, Jason. ( 2015), Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital, London and New York:: Verso;.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Moore, Jason. ( 2017;), ‘ The Capitalocene, Part I: On the nature and origins of our ecological crisis. ’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44:3, pp. 594630.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Moore, Jason. ( 2018;), ‘ The Capitalocene, Part II: Accumulation by appropriation and the centrality of unpaid work/energy. ’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 34:2, pp. 23779.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Nixon, Rob. ( 2013), Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Cambridge, MA:: Harvard UP;.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Terranova, Tiziana. ( 2000;), ‘ Free labor: Producing culture for the digital economy. ’, Social Text, 18:2(63), Summer, pp. 3358.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Chan, Nadine. ( 2020;), ‘ Pandemic temporalities: Distal futurity in the digital Capitalocene. ’, Journal of Environmental Media, 1:Supplement, pp. 13.113.8, doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/jem_00034_1
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/jem_00034_1
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error