International Journal of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences Studies Volume 7 Issue 10 ǁ October 2022 ISSN: 2582-1601 www.ijahss.com International Journal of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences Studies V 7 ● I 10 ● 12 The parallelism between Covid-19 pandemic and Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague Tiziana Lentini Department of Social Science, University for foreigners “Dante Alighieri” of Reggio Calabria, Italy Guest Affiliated Researcher at ASCA Amsterdam School for cultural analysis, The University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Abstract : This paper aims to study the pandemic question as part of a phenomenon rooted in that set of imagined ideas, practices, orientations, values and so on that binds a society together, better known as social imaginary. Through the analysis of one of Jack London‟s masterpieces, The Scarlet Plague, it would be possible to draw a clear outline of the characteristic elements related to the perception of contamination-related phenomena. In her work „Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo‟, Mary Douglas maintains that the fear of contamination tends to be amplified in a stressed social context and this is what actually happened to contemporary society during the Covid-19 pandemic. Through the study of The Scarlet Plague, which offers a detailed analysis of this phenomenon, will be possible to better understand the dynamics behind this mass hysteria and its implication with the topic of contamination. The aesthetic dimension, typical of the Literary field, finds its specificity within an overall theory of knowledge based on the internalization of reality. Jack London‟s prediction about the contemporary civilization‟s future seems to be not so far from nowadays reality, the parallelism between the recent COVID-19 Pandemic and The Scarlet Plague will help us to understand better the dynamics behind the social crisis and the real risk of the disintegration of the moral community. Keywords: Pandemic, Contamination, Moral Community, Literature; I. INTRODUCTION The following study aims to give a contribution to the field of sociological and cultural studies through the analysis of the relationship between social reality and literary representation. Starting from these observations it would be possible to draw a clear outline of the characteristic elements related to the perception of contamination-related phenomena. Before starting it is necessary to focus on the epistemological and methodological questions linked to the decision of analysing a cultural object like the novel. According to Luca Martignani "an important epistemological and methodological need lies in clarifying the heuristic validity of 'heterodox' sources (such as the novel, for example, and literature more generally) in carrying out sociological research, mostly oriented toward deepening the nexus between reality and social construction. Introducing an interesting and original reflection on the nature of the social sciences and the consequences that this ontological status implies in terms of scientific observation (epistemological dimension) is certainly Philippe Corcuff." [1] In his work Pour une pistemologie de la fragilit. Plaidoyer en vue de la reconnaissance scientifique de pratiques transfrontalires, Corcuff defines the concept of pratiques transfrontalires as ―A cross-borderer working to germinate forms of intelligibility at the border of different fields of knowledge and practice. I consider that this cross-border practice is not part of the core of social sciences, which should be able to be situated in the scientific dialogue between theory and empirical work that animates the logic of the production of sociological knowledge. However, I defend the legitimacy of such a cross-border activity, from the point of view of the scientific dynamic itself, in the sense that it can serve as an airlock for the continuous renewal of scientific categories, against the inertia and routines internal to the scientific fields themselves.‖ [2]