Q for Quarantine

Abstract

This chapter focus on the need for the fictive universe, using fantasy building or narratives created by daydreaming, as a way to survive the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. A professor’s narrative is presented as a short story. By living, telling and retelling (Clandinin, 2013) the professor dive into a mix between her own lived life in quarantine and the fictive worst-case pandemic scenario.<p>

<p>The chapter builds on Denzins (1987) ‘performance ethnography’ used as a tool to stage the professor’s identity development through a life crisis caused by a global pandemic turn in human beings life condition in 2020–21. From living in a small calm village the professor’s life suddenly changed, the village turned in to a city of contagion.<p>

<p>The professor’s life story in the COVID-19 pandemic actually represent a universal story – that probably will shape our personal- and professional identity and self-understanding for years to come (Lindberg, 2020). The author sum up the chapter by viewing the short story as part of a larger global trend of COVID-19-narrativesharing in higher education and in the Arts (Satyavolu, 2021).