The future of the past: Memory and social change following the COVID-19 pandemic

This chapter explores the emerging meaning and memory of the COVID-19 pandemic through the various images, metaphors, and narratives circulating about it. These are taken to be the principle means by which the public makes sense of disorienting events and projects a future. There are three main sections to the chapter: the first explores the memory of the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an example that we see with hindsight of how memories are constructed and used to orient us toward the future. Second, the different images, metaphors, and narratives of the COVID-19 pandemic are analyzed with data from a study in Germany on the public's response to the pandemic (see viralcomm.org). As a final step, the chapter asks the question of how memory of COVID-19 pandemic might be used to understand and approach the impending climate change crisis.