Abstract
Sanitary issues and pandemics are in no way new in the history of our collective questioning concerning the organisation of the present and the arrangement of the future according to imperatives external to ourselves, the consequences of which we have been suffering (“black plague,” “Spanish flu,” “Ebola,” “HIV AIDS,” etc.). However, we are now taking for granted, with the appearance in 2019-2020 of COVID-19, the fact that we are no longer in a position to exist fully without external interference in the shared project of human fulfilment. The COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on tourist mobilities can be analysed in the light of other mesological forms in a state of interdependence. Polemology uses the term “total wars,” actual or potential. The recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia, with all its diplomatic, political, military, economic, migratory, humanitarian, and other consequences, is a tragic illustration of that. By terminological extension, it is now possible to speak of “total crises” or “pancrises.”
TopThe Parable Of The Sandwich And Of Total Crisis
The issue of pandemic is in no way new in the history of our collective questionings concerning the organization of the present and the arrangement of the future. Nevertheless, the consequences of which we are suffering ('Black Death', 'Spanish flu', 'Ebola', 'HIV AIDS' etc.), we are now taking for granted, with the appearance in 2019-2020 of Covid-19 is to be linked to the fact that we are no longer in a position to exist fully in the shared project of our human fulfilment. In other words, we acknowledge the abyss before us, and acknowledge our damaged, perishable, fatally noxious situation in which we find ourselves.
George Simmel's complex and powerful sociology, especially that of social forms and reciprocal interactions, teaches that the study of a phenomenon is always most effective and productive when it takes into consideration its relations to other formal wholes and their constituent totality (Joron, 2018). These relationships can be paradoxical, divergent, contradictory. This is also the cost of their conflicting harmony.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Climate Change: Changes in ecosystems caused by both natural cycles and the cultural, ideological, and behavioural impacts of human agitation in a full supremacist expression towards nature.
Otherness: State or quality of what is other, of what is different or distinct, of what is in a situation of discontinuity. This state highlights mesological and phenomenological relations between the Ego and the Other, between the thinking/acting self and the rest to be thought/acted, necessarily implying reciprocal forms of alteration.
Tourism: The action of travelling, of travelling and visiting an “elsewhere” (cultural and/or natural) in response to the desire to experience difference and exoticism. Contemporary tourism has its origins in the Grand Tour undertaken by the aristocratic and bourgeois elites between various European holiday resorts or places of historical renown.
Humanity by Excess: Humanity is defined as the set of human beings circumscribed according to supposedly superior specist characteristics (morality, intelligence, altruism, etc.) distinguishing them from other animal species. The concept of “humanity by excess” integrates the notions of animality, bestiality and savagery into the factual characteristics of humans, outside of any moral considerations.
Humanism by Default: Humanism is a set of philosophies or intellectual movements that find their full expression in the modern period of history, which places man and his values above all other political, economic, racial, and traditional considerations. Humanism aims at emancipation from animality, bestiality and savagery. The concept of “humanism by default” reflects this desire for the ideological and moral non-affiliation of humans with the status of animality.
COVID-19: An infectious and contagious disease caused by a coronavirus identified in 2019, leading to a global pandemic by early 2020. Measures taken to contain or limit the pandemic: urgent techno-pharmaceutical development of vaccines deemed effective; worldwide dissemination and use of these vaccines (with significant disparities); containment or restrictions on movement of populations at local, national, and international levels.
Violence: An act of aggression against the moral, psychological, cultural or physical integrity of the individual or collective Other. The practice and ethical reception of violence are considered to be normative, since they are variously appreciated (between condemnation and necessity) according to the cultural, historical, political or even legal modalities of human organisations.
Total Crises: Breakdowns of equilibrium which were initially independent or dissociated in their management and which, under the impetus of the globalisation of material and virtual exchanges, have been added to each other, complementing each other and entering into a protocol of synergy which is difficult to control. The notion of “pancrisis” refers to this totality of crises, under reciprocal influence.
Mesology: The science of milieus , the study of the relationship of living beings, and therefore of human beings, with their living spaces. The milieu is defined by what is distant from the periphery, from what is around, from the surroundings or from the extremities. It is therefore not synonymous with environment, but rather indicates what is specific to the mediation between a singular being and its natural and cultural soil.
Des-Existence: A process of disengagement from the fact of existing or having a palpable and acceptable reality on the ontological and material level, provoked, and maintained by the multiple supports of digital super-existence.