Risk Society: A Pandemic Face of the Modern World Emily John Mandel’s Station Eleven and COVID-19 in relation to Ulrich Beck’s

Ghani Rahman,Iqra Maheen,Muhammad Sohaib,Muhammad Farooq

doi:10.52567/pjsr.v3i4.141

Abstract

Ulrich Beck’s notion of ‘risk society’ reveals the ugly aspects of modernity in today’s modern world. It demonstrates bio-ecological and technological terrors in the modern era. The present research paper discusses Emily John Mandel’s Station Eleven, a post- apocalyptic science fiction, and the current outbreak of pandemic of Covid-19 in relation to Beck’s ‘risk society’. Mandel’s Station Eleven, like Covid-19, deals with the pandemic of ‘Georgia flu’ which killed millions of people. The paper aims at exploring the risk features of modern world. It exhibits that today’s globalized world has started manifesting the ugly faces of modernity in the form of terrible biological war which is either a deliberately manufactured one or the outcome of human collective negligent actions resulted in an unwanted catastrophe. The study terms the pandemics as shared fear and the induced outcome of shared actions across the world. Keywords: risk society, apocalyptic literature, modernity, Covid-19, pandemic

Highlights

IntroductionIn the wake of globalization, the post-apocalyptic/ modern world relates to a number of aspects of life, such as technological, economic, politico-religious, socio-cultural, and industrial, etc
Today’s world rests on a paradoxical structure of both progress and risk
The present study aims at exploring the risk features of modern world in the miniature world of Emily St

Summary

Introduction

In the wake of globalization, the post-apocalyptic/ modern world relates to a number of aspects of life, such as technological, economic, politico-religious, socio-cultural, and industrial, etc. Modernity has passed to the post-modern and post-apocalyptic age which is unique for making man a global citizen who feels at home in the entire world due to technological interconnectivity, overlapping of cultures and rapid progress of industrialization. The present research paper discusses Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 novel Station Eleven, a piece of post-apocalyptic science fiction, and the current outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in relation to Beck’s (1992; 1996; 1999) theory of ‘risk society’ of modernity. The fire-like outbreak and global spread of pathogenic human Covid-19 has sparked the attention of scientists, biologists, politicians, technologists, security forces personnel, teachers, researchers, journalists, doctors, etc.

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