Special Issue - Postnormal Matters World Futures Review 2021, Vol. 0(0) 1–17 Afterthoughts: Transnormal, © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: “ ” sagepub.com/journals-permissions the New Normal and Other DOI: 10.1177/19467567211025755 Varieties of “Normal” in journals.sagepub.com/home/wfr Postnormal Times Ziauddin Sardar1 Abstract What is normal? And what constitutes “the new normal”? This article argues that the much vaunted “new normal” is nothing more than a return to the status quo ante, life before COVID-19, with a few extra appendages. After discussing the notion of the complex normal, the article suggests that what lies at the other end of postnormal times is best seen as the domain of the transnormal: over and beyond capitalism and neoliberalism, modernity, and postmodernism, almost most of what we can possibly conceive as normal or “the new normal.” The route to a transnormal world is a process of systematic movement leading to transposition: acts of changing relationships, structures, and values that interactively and collectively relocate humanity to a trans, or stable, state or realm of existence. The article suggests that we use the concepts of transmodernity and mutually assured diversity as tools to navigate toward the transnormal and our way out of postnormal times. Keywords postnormal times, normal, complexity, the new normal, transnormal, transmodernity, mutually assured diversity “The last normal photo.” In May 2020, Robyn all confirming an instant nostalgia for some- Vinter, a journalist based in Leeds for Yorkshire thing called “the normal.” Post, started the hashtag #lastnormalphoto But what is this “normal” that is so desired (Bakare 2020). It went viral: she received by so many people? Conspicuously missing thousands of replies, with people across the from the last normal photos are pictures of world posting the last picture they took before people living from hand to mouth, plates with the COVID-19 global lockdown. Amongst the photos were music concerts, football matches, shopping, restaurant dinners, plates piled up 1Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies, with food glorious food, people meeting el- London, UK derly relatives, revellers on the beach, fashion, fi Corresponding Author: and a truckload of celebrity sel es. Other Ziauddin Sardar, Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures hashtags followed, including #happiertimes, Studies, 1 Orchard Gate, London NW9 6HU, UK. #beforesocialdistancing, and #misstheolddays, Email: [email protected] 2 World Futures Review 0(0) little or no food, migrant and refugees living in Cockburn told us that the normal gets worse squalor, and the homeless living on the streets. and worse: We do not see this as “normal.” But as Pope Francis (2020) points out, this too is normal for Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher a substantial segment of the global population— wage a reality we cannot deny: “to discover such a Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage large number of people who are on the mar- Suddenly it’s repression, moratorium on rights … ’ gins And we don t see them, because poverty What did they think the politics of panic would … is bashful they have become part of the invite? ” landscape; they are things. There is a great deal Person in the street shrugs “Security comes first” more that is “part of the landscape” that we do But the trouble with normal is it always gets not see as normal: devastation caused by climate worse. change; the megafires in Australia and the United States; cities, such as Male and Jakarta, For Nichol (2020), a California-based nov- drowning underwater; the rising tide of far right elist, “normal life” was certainly getting crueller in Europe, the United States, India, and else- and crueller. She had to live through “the last where; gross inequality within and between year’s fire, and the fires the year before that, and nations; the incompetence of political and the firesyearbeforethat.” During 2018, she business elite; authoritarian regimes arresting, informs us, “fires burned nearly two million beating, or torturing dissidents; and the hoard- acres in California. And in 2017, fire ravaged a ing of global wealth in ever fewer hands. The fi – signi cant portion of my hometown. When the nostalgic perception of pre COVID-19 days is university where I teach recently closed for the thus a rather truncated, myopic normal. The semester because of shelter-at-home orders, it normal, as Indian writer and activist, Roy was the fourth closure in three years.” The In- (2020), points out, “is the wreckage of a train dian intellectual Mishra (2020) suggested that that has been careening down the tract for even bigger “systematic crisis” lay ahead, and as years.” Indeed, from the perspective of those such, return to imagined normal was not on the who are suffering from the direct impact of cards. Baker (2020) concludes his “long read” climate change, or migrants and refugees fleeing article in the Guardian, “we can’tgobackto oppression, or millions of those who lost their normal,” by suggesting “we are not watching a jobs due to automation and AI, or those millions movie, we are writing one, together, until the who are thrown in internment camps or declared end.” non-citizens simply because of their faith, the What then lies at the end of the COVID-19 pre–COVID-19 world was rather abnormal: this tunnel depends on your perception and is not how things ought to be, you can hear them outlook—whether you are a pessimist or an scream. optimist, politically on the left or the right, realist or a dreamer, or looking at short term or “ Return to Normal long term futures. In the short run, the the new normal,” Park (Park 2020) tells us in Time, The clamor for life to get “back to normal,” as means “the death of the handshake,”“re- evident on the front pages of newspapers as on thinking how self-isolation fits into broader the news channels and social media, is a de- policy decisions,” and “microbial threats like mand for return to the status quo ante: the coronaviruses will inevitably move from the “normal” state of affairs before COVID-19. bottom to the top of public health priority lists, But as graffiti in Hong Kong, and elsewhere, and the danger of infectious diseases will loom declared: “there can be no return to normal large on our collective conscious.” According because normal was the problem in the first to numerous reports in the Guardian, the “new place.” Indeed, way back in 1983, singer Bruce normal” will include social distancing for years Sardar 3 to come, more people working from home, He cites President Emmanuel Macron of common use of face masks, swift shutdowns, France who declared: “many certainties and health checks when flying, and end of business convictions will be swept away. Many things travel—namely, the old normal with a few we thought were impossible are happening.” restrictions. Beyond that, the optimistic view The most obvious “impossible” thing that is all suggests that the experience of COVID-19 too evident is the return of the big state after a could enhance our understanding of climate 30-year retreat. In many countries, states have change, there will be mass protests for change, provided support for its citizens, forced by and “moments of solidarity” could be trans- COVID-19 to isolate; in some countries, even formed into “the broader political sphere.” The small and big businesses have been rescued and pessimists believe that surveillance will in- stopped from going bankrupt. Nationalization, tensify, authoritarian regimes will become even another recent “impossible,” is now on the more draconian, distrust between government cards: Spain considered and then postponed and citizens will increase, neoliberal capitalism nationalizing private hospitals, France is keen will run wild, and there will be more deaths and to nationalize large businesses, and in Britain, suffering worldwide. However, it could take there is a strong possibility of nationalizing some time before we are out of the crisis. As some parts of public transport. However, it may journalist Young (2020) suggests in the At- take a few years before we can declare the end lantic, the “end game” has three possible of COVID-19 days. outcomes. First, there is an international unity In a massive dossier, with contributions and collaboration to concurrently stamp out the from a host of American and European aca- virus but this does not look likely. Second, demics and writers, Politico magazine provides people develop “herd immunity” but this will a long catalog of how “Coronavirus will “come at a terrible cost,” and “it would likely change the world permanently.” The sugges- leave behind many millions of corpses and a tions from the good and the great include the trail of devastated health systems.” The third obvious—we will be more reluctant to touch potential outcome is that the virus is ex- people, there will be less communal dining and tinguished here and there until a viable vaccine more cooking, we will work more from home, is developed; something that may take “very and virtual meetings will become common—to long.” We will have to learn to live with the not-so-obvious positive and negative predic- virus until such time. tions. These include polarization and individ- ualism: “the coronavirus pandemic marks the The Changing Normal end of our romance with market society and hyper-individualism.” Or, we could also go the Whatever happens, Yuval Noah Harari argued other way: become less communal and more in a much-quoted article in Financial Times authoritarian. “Regulatory barriers to online that we will never be the same again. Short tools will fall,” and Big Tech would become “emergency measures will become a fixture of omnipotent.