Re-imagining a New Normal: COVID-19 Pandemic and the Changing Face of Social Interaction

Future communities have been imagined. When such communities confront us, we respond not by imagining but re-imagining the emerging communities so that we can cope with the new reality. But are there new realities, or is what we imagine as new a case and curse of historical recurrence? The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted communities as we have known them. Disruptions enable transformation through creativity. Disruptions introduce a semblance of newness that requires new ways of doing, seeing, reading and telling reality. This paper discusses how, in the face of global lockdown, quarantine and social distancing rules–the new normal ‒ the creative impulse of humans has responded and adapted to COVID-19 pandemic-induced change. © 2021 University of the Witwatersrand.