The virus and its images - Metaphorical genealogy of the risk society

Abstract

The research has the challenge of building a genealogy of the images produced within the risk society and establishing a relationship between the concept of risk and the imaginary. As a theoretical framework, we will have Gilbert Durand's theory unrolled in the Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary. As a corpus of analysis, we will make a case study regarding visual representations of the risks, specifically, of diseases caused by viruses such as HIV, SARS, H1N1, Ebola and Coronavirus. In the study the concept of risk will be analyzed in a broad way, from a philosophical, communicational and anthropological reasoning of the term, to an instrumental conceptualization for the field of Risk Communication. For that, we will analyze constellations of images that metaphorically represent the risks and their effects. One of these effects are narratives and practices produced by the risk society that least caution about hazards, and that, however, act in the production of chronic, stigmatized and punitive subjectivities, as Vaz (2019) predicts. One of the strategies is to consider the metaphor not only as an ornament or as something that moves the sense from one place to another. The metaphor will be observed as a producer of truths. The concept of risk is thus perceived by theorists such as Beck, Giddens and Douglas as a form of normalization that became a kind of microphysics that acts in all areas of everyday life. This contemporary form of normalization is significant in the process of oppression and identification where the relationship and life management change significantly. Key messages To make a scientific conceptualization for an ethic of the Communication of Risk in the contemporaneity having as a foundation the imaginary produced by the visual metaphors that describe the viruses. This study has as a challenge to know the relationships between the concept of risk and imaginary that can collaborate in the development of prevention practices in the field of Communication.