ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 examines the anthropologically rich but hitherto unexplored terrain of the post-pandemic condition so as to ask whether it affords a radical new concept of that it is to be human. The chapter compares scientific studies, works of literature, and films that portray post-pandemic humanity with similar works related to the postnuclear condition. The chapter focuses on how the former imagine the world after the pandemic “end of the world” as one where nature rapidly reclaims the planet. And, at the same time, how in this post-pandemic world humans are imagined as being unable to join natural reemergence. The chapter explores the consequences of this vision for the way in which we understand autopoiesis in relation to human sociality. By rendering social self-creation into a contingent rather than foundational trait of being human, it is argued that the pandemic imaginary suspends future humanity from the realm of nature, where emergence is accepted as an irreducible process of speciation, and from culture, as a process of reflexive social transformation.
