Reanimating the plague

The idea of ‘plague’ has returned to public consciousness with the arrival COVID-19. An anachronistic and extremely problematic concept for thinking about biopolitical catastrophe, plague nevertheless offers an enormous historical range a potentially highly generative metaphorical framework psychosocial studies engage with, example, through Albert Camus’ (2013) Plague Sophocles’ (2015) Oedipus King. It is, moreover, word that is likely remain firmly within remit as we move further into Anthropocene, face pandemics spectre antibiotic resistance. A return also opens up question psychoanalysis, which Freud often cited having described ‘plague’. Psychoanalysis like plague, troubling discourse studies, but, it may help us work disorders dis-eases COVID times. In fact, if recent pandemic reanimated notion metaphor in turn reanimate this article suggest some analogical, even genealogical, resonances such implication.