Pandemic Death Discourse: Denial, Disparity and the Promise of Communication

Since Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic, the virus has caused more than 1 million deaths in the United States and 7 million deaths worldwide. The rampant loss of life exposed fissures in healthcare systems, disrupted mourning rituals, complicated the bereavement process, and laid bare the inequities of death. Though much has been written on dying and death during COVID-19, this book is the first to attend to the communicative and representational practices through which meanings about loss during the pandemic are negotiated.

This book begins by addressing our collective death denial, and the institutional and ideological barriers that must be surmounted if we are to afford dignity and humanity to those who have been stripped of it. Against this backdrop, the authors examine an array of practices and channels through which various social groups have sought to dismantle oppressive structures, find hope amid despair, and reshape understandings of mortality, including what it means to be in community. COVID-19 has issued a challenge to our conscience and to our symbolic capacities, and this book is an earnest response to that challenge, one that is attuned to our collective vulnerabilities.

M.F. Alvarez, PhD, is an assistant professor of communication at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of two previous books, and winner of a top book award from the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. Carmen Hernández-Ojeda, PhD, is an independent scholar based in Spain who promotes performance autoethnography as a (self)decolonizing tool. Her work has appeared in the International Review of Qualitative Research, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, and Tabula Rasa, among others. Alexander B. Joy, PhD, is an independent scholar from New Hampshire. Gyuri S. Kepes, PhD, is a practicing artist, filmmaker, and assistant professor of communication at Landmark College in Putney, Vermont, where he launched the first television network created for and operated by neurodivergent students.