The Bubble: Metaphors we survive by

Metaphors are indispensable tools for making sense of reality, including the ongoing reality of systemic colonial relations—or to obfuscate it (to deflect the need to enact substantive decolonisation agendas, for example). In times of crisis they perform a crucial role in translating and interpreting a rapidly changing world.

Viral phenomena have multiplied recently, literally and metaphorically. But all crises generate metaphorical languages. Terrorism was not a virus, it was a bacterial formation; the GFC was a fierce and incontrollable storm… The ‘Canberra bubble’ – a bad thing – has become the ‘family bubble’ – a good thing. To understand what is at stake in the metaphors we use and the ways they are deployed, we need a critical engagement with their underlying assumptions, their rhetorical operation, their ideological effects, and their real-world implications.

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Session 7

Pandemic metaphors

Friday 30 October

Are we the victim of our metaphors?

Desmond Manderson (ANU Centre for Law Arts and Humanities), ‘The Bubble: COVID and its metaphors’.

Fiona Jenkins (Philosophy, Australian National University), ‘There’s no place like home: Home-comings of the viral pandemic’.

Benjamin Hegarty (University of Melbourne), ‘The mask and the face it covers’.

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