Pandemic, Space and Environment in Blindness by José Saramago

Mentioned and praised even by the Noble prize committee, in 1998, Blindness (published in 1995) is a complex novel dealing with the human nature and behaviour in the context of a crisis generated by a sudden and unknown disease. The relevance of reading this book these days, when the entire humanity (and I daresay our planet as an interdependent system) is facing a terrible viral pandemic, is obvious and helpful. The present paper aims to explore José Saramagos novel from a combined geo-ecocritical perspective, emphasizing the interrelatedness of humanity, space, and surrounding environment. The main research questions of this study are: how do humans interact with the places they live in and the ecosphere during a pandemic? and how does a pandemic affect the human behaviour? The geoecocritical approach is due to the interdependence between space and environment, one can hardly explore one of the previously mentioned components of the fictional world without referring to the other. Another aspect that this essay will touch is the alteration of peoples emotions due to the difficulties they face during pandemics and the importance of emotion management in these extreme situations. For the proposed analysis the following methods will be indispensable: close-reading, ecocriticism, geocriticism, and narratology.

EDITORS' INTRODUCTION

JFSR [Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion] and CoLaboratory will begin curating related information from the organization's history, including retrospective contributions such as roundtables, lists of editors and board members from the very beginning, etc." Peter Sabo and Rhiannon Graybill's article, "The Bible and Margaret Atwood's The Testaments," continues the twin themes of misogyny and reimaginings in examining how Atwood's novel subversively draws upon the Bible to suggest the liberatory power of infinite interpretations in rewriting stories replete with "misogynist representations of gender, violence, and patriarchy," and whether such an approach is successful (132). Haruka Umetsu Cho takes us to Japan in her analysis of writings from the 1970s by female Japanese Christians, who simultaneously relocate-an interpretive act-"the oppression of women in the church within the larger issues of Japanese colonial legacy" (185) and are blinded by reflection on race, bringing us full circle to the deep connections between colonization and racism also drawn in several of the reflections in the roundtable.