Re-imagining a New Normal: COVID-19 Pandemic and the Changing Face of Social Interaction

Abstract

Future communities have been imagined. When such communities confront us, we respond not by imagining but re-imagining the emerging communities so that we can cope with the new reality. But are there new realities, or is what we imagine as new a case and curse of historical recurrence? The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted communities as we have known them. Disruptions enable transformation through creativity. Disruptions introduce a semblance of newness that requires new ways of doing, seeing, reading and telling reality. This paper discusses how, in the face of global lockdown, quarantine and social distancing rules – the new normal ‒ the creative impulse of humans has responded and adapted to COVID-19 pandemic-induced change.