Instantaneous Memories of the “First Wave” of the Pandemic: Processes of Historicization and Forms of Time Acculturation

Abstract

How has the first wave of the pandemic been recounted as an event whose historicization was immediately sought for? With what hybridization of discursive genres and formats? The essay will explore some forms of immediate recording and memorialization of the first wave of the pandemic, from its overflow until the end of the first lockdown. In particular, the epistemic attitude through which that present had been at once told as past is investigated by looking at two investigative reports (Longform) published by the Italian newspaper la Repubblica on May 16 and May 23, 2020. Discussing first some theoretical and methodological presuppositions, and then moving to the analysis of the above mentioned case-study, the aim is to demonstrate how the construction of an instantaneous memory of the pandemic as a traumatic event – of its explosion and its beginning: of its main actors and their responsibilities – relied heavily on a return to chronology as a seemingly outdated strategy of discursive temporalization and acculturation of time and its cultural regime. In so doing, the immediate dilated present as past has been not only traced and trucked, but also controlled, allowing the projection towards a possible end; moreover, opening up the very possibility of a new beginning.