Conspiracies and stratagems during corona

Dr Paola Monachesi (Languages, Literature and Communication) and Dr Marina Turco (former Media and Culture Studies scholar) talk about two contrasting perspectives on the corona pandemic in an article on MicroMega (an Italian cultural magazine): the perspective of the conspiracy thinker and the stratagematic perspective (Monachesi and Turco, 2017).

Conspiracy theories and COVID-19

Conspiracy thinkers indicate (possible) causal links between various events. Conspiracy thinking is the victory of the causal over the accidental. But much of what happens is due to chance. Coincidence is not the negation of causality, but the effect of the interaction between infinite series of events that influence each other in an unpredictable way.

Stratagems and COVID-19

In this scenario, chance creates an unexpected space of freedom for the actor who wants to change the rules of play and the balance of power. The action that exploits this space in an improvised, provisional and often short-lived way is called a stratagem. A stratagem does not describe an action of which the result is certain: it is an action that follows a path through different series of events, that avoids the established processes of power or uses them for its own purposes.

The pandemic has brought about major changes in the economic, social and cultural spheres: the emergence of new and unexpected events and processes and the temporary weakening of the usual rules and protocols have created more room for stratagems.

Experiments

The COVID-19 emergency created a context for major experiments in the digital world and also produced initiatives that foreshadow possible changes (especially in countries such as Italy) in various areas: from education to work, from culture to tourism. These changes are analysed in the article in view of the two perspectives.