Pandemic and Pandemonium: Crisis and Chaos or New Normal?

Abstract

Memories of the devastating effect of the pandemic caused by the Covid-19 virus during the early years of this decade have not yet faded from our mind. The catastrophic effect of the pandemic was so pervasive that other than enormous human casualties it had heralded significant changes in politics and economics all over the globe and signalled augury of lingering social, psychological and pathological effects. The changes, many of which could be reverted but have been endorsed and adapted to during and after the pandemic, are described as new normal, by this time very much normal. In this paper it is argued that while the eulogistic narratives propagated in justifying the conditions of new normal, the genesis of the idea of new normal is fundamentally embedded in the failure of the state and its machineries in combating a crisis. In support of this view, the phenomenon of pandemic is equated to the idea of pandemonium as was conceptualized by John Milton, an illustrious 17th Century English poet, in his epic poem Paradise Lost. Theoretical frameworks of different crisis theories are briskly recounted to broach an analytical approach in reconsidering the crisis caused by the pandemic a couple of years ago.