Exceptionally, we propose here two contributions in French, which are also an invitation to take a step out of the Southern African situation for a while. These contributions revolve around the following questions:

— Can we use history to understand the current Covid-19 epidemic?

— How can historians think what is new, unprecedented, when their disciplinary reflex is often to seek similarities in situations of the past?

— What does a pandemic reveal about the nature of our contemporary societies?

Two French-speaking historians allow us to reflect on how history may — or may not — contribute to the scientific discussion about the current epidemic (to non-French speakers: don’t hesitate to have this text translated by an automatic translator, such as DeepL: it is worth the effort).

Alexandre Klein is a specialist of medical history at the University of Ottawa. He offers an insightful analysis of the coronavirus crisis through the prism of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical concepts. In particular, he shows that the current pandemic is the first to occur within “control societies” (Deleuze) that are very different from the classic “disciplinary societies” described by Michel Foucault:

“Disciplinary societies organized around institutions of confinement (factories, hospitals, schools, prisons), which Michel Foucault had described a decade earlier, were thus succeeded by more fluid societies, ‘obviously no longer passing through environments of confinement’, but through a series of devices, often technological, of control”

READ Alexandre Klein, Une épidémie du contrôle, HistoireEngagee.ca, 8/04/2020

Guillaume Lachenal is a historian of medicine in colonial and contemporary Africa at the University Paris-Diderot and a member of the Sphere laboratory. He is interviewed on France Culture radio about the relevance of the comparison between Covid-19 outbreak and the epidemics of the past. In the first sound document, Lachenal suggests the dead ends that such a comparative approach may lead to : the social, mental and scientific frameworks differ greatly from one era to another; there are also biological differences: we do not have the same bodies as in the Middle Ages, for example; our societies have a different relationship to medicine and to doctors; etc. He also points out some elements of convergence in all epidemic outbreaks : rumours; flight reactions; the creation of “epidemic narratives” (as the historian Charles Rosenberg called them); the inventive capacities of human societies; the search for a miracle treatment; etc.). He also pays a tribute to the historian Marc Bloch who reflected on  the astonishment that seizes us collectively and prevents us to think clearly, and the difficulty for historians to struggle with present events. Finally, he warns against a tendency for historians to retreat into the past and to compare at all costs with the present situation.

LISTEN : 1st podcast: France Culture, “Que valent les comparaisons avec les épidémies du passé ?”, 14/04/2020

LISTEN :A second podcast extends this reflection on the historians’ views on Covid-19 : Paroles d’histoires, “100.Le coronavirus, perspectives historiques, avec Guillaume Lachenal”,25/03/2020