Lethal Virality of Otherness

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.”