Pandemic and its metaphors: Sontag revisited in the COVID-19 era

Abstract

As the COVID-19 crisis spreads around the globe, the rhetoric about the pandemic evoked by journalists and politicians harks back to that of prior diseases and epidemics. This short article updates the framework of AIDS metaphors developed by critical theorist Susan Sontag to the COVID-19 era. Alongside the damage wrought by the virus itself, these discourses can inflict greater, even lethal damage, while thrusting into relief ongoing critical concerns around socio-cultural power, injustice, and inequality.