Goodbye ontological security: Whitehead, Latour and the implications of Covid-19 on Social Theory
Abstract
The coronavirus pandemic in 2020 was not just a blow to our political institutions or our epistemological ways of understanding the world, but something far beyond all that, by invading the depths of what you would call reality. Through Whitehead and Latour, within the vitalist tradition that both are part of, here also called Alternative Social Theory (AST), it is kind of obvious that the pandemic has transformed not only our ways of knowing the world, and its implied representations, but mainly with a certain ontological horizon behind the scenes of reality as such. The following essay, supported by the works of Latour and Whitehead, two major representatives of AST, aims to suggest six implications as a result of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, six major blows that shook the pillars of what Giddens Called “Ontological Security”.
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References
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