Nature of disruption, disruption of nature: during and after the pandemic

Esther Leslie argues that catastrophe and crisis have been an integral part of human history during capitalism. Although we live in vicious times, times have long been vicious. It is true that the Corona pandemic has gripped everyone today and brought us to a dark age, but – Leslie asks herself – is the situation truly worse than in the period of the first primitive accumulation as peasants were thrown off the lands and dispossessed, not just of place but also of their own energies? The way she sees it, the old ways reassert themselves, in the pressure for a return to the normal, to the status quo. She also reminds us that in Walter Benjamin’s outstanding analysis, it is precisely this desired ‘status quo’ that is the true catastrophe. Leslie’s central argument is that despite all its exceptionality the pandemic only acuminated existing problems. Its odd merit is that henceforth these problems appear in a clearer light. Granted that we overcome the romantic idea that nature is something which would save us from our own self-inflicted (self-)destruction, from now on we might begin to think how to “save ourselves along with everything and everyone else.