Culture and commoning in a time of coronavirus: Introduction to a Cultural Commons special section on COVID-19

Abstract

As part of the editorial team of a cultural studies journal, we have been thinking a good deal about what our response might be to the unfolding crisis.At times, it has felt as though any kind of intervention would be too soon or too opportunistic.There is certainly a widespread unease among academics and writers who do not wish to be seen to jump on the bandwagon of what Priyamvada Gopal referred to as 'hot take corona studies' 1 ('Just do ensure you're alive to see your pathbreaking essay in Journal of Corona Cultural Inquiry published', she tweeted).But of course, on the other hand, anyone working within cultural studies traditions has coursing through their veins a sense of responsibility to document, chart, interrogate, and to say something, at least, about such a seismic global event that is set to re-order the material, cultural, social and political in profound, and yet still unknowable, ways.Stuart Hall (1988) wrote, When a conjuncture unrolls, there is no 'going back'.History shifts gears.The terrain changes.You are in a new moment.You have to attend, 'violently', with all the 'pessimism of the intellect' at your command, to the 'discipline of the conjuncture'

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