{"id":10382,"date":"2020-03-12T16:16:58","date_gmt":"2020-03-12T21:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=10382"},"modified":"2021-06-13T21:58:53","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T02:58:53","slug":"hole-in-the-sky-or-whats-a-meta-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/03\/12\/hole-in-the-sky-or-whats-a-meta-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Hole in the sky (or what’s a meta for?)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As I write, there are two known cases of COVID-19 in my state of Vermont, but there are no tests available to me or to the next person to tell us if either of us could be a carrier. Universities and colleges (including my own) have cancelled classes and moved to online teaching. The air hangs heavy with… something. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s where I reach for my metaphors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It feels like we are waiting for an ultra slow-motion tidal wave to arrive, and hoping it won’t be a tsunami when it gets here. Life goes on, but in a lower key, with a background awareness that the wave may already be infiltrating amidst us… <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Or maybe the better metaphor is that of gathering to watch an eclipse, where what’s being eclipsed is the full-throttle hum of industrial capitalism. For a moment, things are slowing down, and some parts may have to grind to a halt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s enjoy the slowing down, the quieting, and the moments of darkness as the hole in the sky appears over our heads. It may remind us of what’s important before the valves get turned on again. We might even decide that some don’t really need turning on again. Wouldn’t that be something?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coronavirus is of course not a new thing in the world, just a new variation on an old thing. Not like climate change<\/a>, for instance (though the cross-cutting impacts of the two may be weird<\/a>). It was only a matter of time before something would test the global system — of strangely interdependent states, (mostly neoliberal) political-economic regimes, rapidly evolving media systems, and medical and eco\/biological management regimes — that’s been developing unevenly, in fits and starts, over the last thirty or so years since the Cold War system collapsed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it that, then: a test? Or a massive temperature check on a feverish world<\/a>? Or a tidal wave (that’s at least boding the existence of future tsunamis)? An eclipse? What’s your favorite metaphor? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hat tip to Gregory Bateson for the meta for<\/a> metaphor. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I write, there are two known cases of COVID-19 in my state of Vermont, but there are no tests available to me or to the next person to tell us if either of us could be a carrier. Universities and colleges (including my own) have cancelled classes and moved to online teaching. The air […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[660440],"tags":[520731,628305,520734,292,350228,520733,520735],"class_list":["post-10382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-manifestos-and-auguries","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-disaster-media","tag-environmental-communication","tag-metaphors","tag-pandemics","tag-risk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2Hs","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11576,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2021\/02\/13\/zone-as-metaphor-metaphor-as-zone\/","url_meta":{"origin":10382,"position":0},"title":"Zone as metaphor, metaphor as Zone","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 13, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"My book Ecologies of the Moving Image takes Andrei Tarkovsky's Zone, so richly depicted in his celebrated 1979 film Stalker, as a kind of master metaphor for how cinema works and, by implication, how art in general works: it beckons its receiver into following it into a zone where, at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/02\/stalker-1979-002-00m-ln4-dog-running-through-water_0-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/02\/stalker-1979-002-00m-ln4-dog-running-through-water_0-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/02\/stalker-1979-002-00m-ln4-dog-running-through-water_0-1.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/02\/stalker-1979-002-00m-ln4-dog-running-through-water_0-1.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8731,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/04\/20\/artistic-bubbleology-101\/","url_meta":{"origin":10382,"position":1},"title":"Artistic bubbleology 101","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the best ways to respond to the\u00a0Bubble\u00a0I mentioned in the last post is through the arts. Here's\u00a0the poster for my summer course examining artistic responses to the global crisis.","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2875,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/03\/06\/metaphorics-of-revolution-rebellion\/","url_meta":{"origin":10382,"position":2},"title":"Metaphorics of “revolution” & “rebellion”","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"When we hear about a Twitter and Facebook \"revolution\" in \"X Square\" or in a city in Libya, do we get keyed up? When we later hear about \"rebels\" and \"civil war\" somewhere in Africa (in that same Libya), do we tune out? This week's On the Media -- one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1145,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/10\/30\/climate-change-supermodeling\/","url_meta":{"origin":10382,"position":3},"title":"climate change supermodeling?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kdz555JBIwY&hl=en&fs=1& Also published at Indications. Having just written a piece for Environmental Communication about the promises and pitfalls of cognitive science-based approaches to communicating about issues like climate change, I can't help commenting on this video and blog post that arrived this morning on my blog reader from identity campaigning,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/kdz555JBIwY\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1048,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/02\/from-huxley-to-obama-nlp\/","url_meta":{"origin":10382,"position":4},"title":"from Huxley to Obama & NLP","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I've mentioned Aldous Huxley here before. This 1958 interview with Mike Wallace shows him to be as broad-rangingly perceptive as anyone at the time - with insightful comments on persuasion techniques, Foucauldian surveillance and control (before Foucault wrote a word about the topic), television (which he thought was already \"being\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8719,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/04\/19\/living-in-a-bubble\/","url_meta":{"origin":10382,"position":5},"title":"Living in a bubble","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been using the metaphor of the Sustainability Bottleneck in my teaching, but another one that is more immediately graspable is The Bubble. Two things landed in my in-box this morning that testify to this (but that's a pretty daily occurrence, e.g., see\u00a0this, this, this, this, this, this, and this,\u00a0all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"images","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2016\/04\/images-275x171.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10382"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10394,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10382\/revisions\/10394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}