Resumo

MUSIYIWA, Mickias. Literature and the Battle against Covid-19 in Zimbabwe: A Study of Flight Mlambo's Digital Verse. JLS [online]. 2022, vol.38, n.1, pp.1-17. ISSN 1753-5387.  http://dx.doi.org/10.25159/1753-5387/10419.

This article evaluates the contribution of digital literature in the struggle against the novel coronavirus contagion, focusing on Flight Rufaro Mlambo's poetry of ChiNdau and English expression. Since the outbreak of the disease in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, in November 2019, and its declaration as a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020, various efforts to combat the disease have been implemented at global, regional, national and institutional levels. Notable in this struggle has been the use of cyberspace to complement other non-digital fronts in fighting the seemingly elusive pathogen. Written texts, audio recordings, songs, drama and verse videos are among the multiple artistic forms posted online as anti-Covid-19 weaponry. Employing the "existence-as-war" theory, Mlambo's verse is evaluated against this context in which the efforts to suppress the virus are theoretically interpreted in real war terms. The war's antagonists pit governments and all local, regional and international partners on one hand and the virus, sceptics and denialists on the other. The article seeks to answer the following question: To what extent does Zimbabwe's anti-Covid-19 digital literature serve as effective weaponry against the stubbornly mutating lethal virus?

Palavras-chave : Covid-19; digital poetry; Zimbabwe; ChiNdau; coronavirus; pandemic; existence-as-war theory.

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