L’immaginario sociale della pandemia. Sacro, temporalità e "messa in scena del rischio"

This paper aims to analyze the pandemic phenomenon, understood as an imaginal and communicative object. In the first part of the essay, the theme of contagion is related to the dimension of the sacred and its peculiar aspects concerning temporality. In the second part, the coronavirus phenomenon is analyzed within the theoretical framework of the sociology of risk with particular attention to the “staging of the reality of global risk”, in the words of Ulrich Beck. The complexity of the phenomenon is revealed by the scientific predictions in an arena of experts often positioned on opposite sides. The last part of this essay is focused on temporality within scientific predictions.