Is the Past a Prologue? Construing Future Possibilities amidst Present Perditions in a Continuing Time of Crisis

Abstract

In my last invited LUMEN plenary presentation, drafted at the beginning of a (too) long COVID-19 year, I spoke on “Logos, Pathos and Ethical Practices across Selves, Time and Space in a Pandemic Era,” drawing for my theoretical inspiration from thinkers (and statements) by thinkers such as psychologist George Kelly, social theorist Kenneth Boulding, literary social scholar Kenneth Burke, and media theorist Marshall McLuhan. Now, sometime later, I elaborate the themes for our WLC through their sharp eyes. Beginning from these select insights (among others), I will elaborate from the vantage point of a time that creates for all a “turning point” (stasis or crisis) on those bridges “within us” (marked within “the realms of individual affective motivation and cognitive thought,” and outline how we can together form scripts for “effective and ethical public action,” given the ambitions of the conference organizers. I take this to be necessary to productively survey “the interferences between the new theoretical approaches and the social and educational practice, taking into account the need for an ethical resizing of the social action”).