DG 13perspectives Humanities PDF
DG 13perspectives Humanities PDF
DG 13perspectives Humanities PDF
13
Perspectives on
the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
Introduction
Rabea Rittgerodt
Acquisitions Editor History
[email protected]
@dg_history
Contents
#1 Thomas Zimmer Pandemics in History:
Global Solidarity is the Only Way Forward 5
#
4 Susan Arndt Blinded by Privilege.
The West and the Rest under Lockdown 22
#
6 Viv Newman We’ve Nursed this Way before:
Covid-19 and World War One Nursing 34
#
9 Tue Søvsø A Crisis of Value. Stoic Responses
to the Pandemic 51
#
10 Irene Kacandes How Co-Witnessing could
Transform the Post-Pandemic World 57
#
11 Hannes Bajohr
Covid, an Injustice 64
#
12 Uwe Schütte W.G. Sebald & The Natural
History of Covid-19 70
#
13 Doris Bachmann-Medick The Humanities —
Marginalized after Corona? 77
Perspectives on the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
# 1
Thomas Zimmer
Thomas Zimmer is assistant professor of contemporary history
at Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg. Beginning in Fall 2020
he will be DAAD Visiting Professor at Georgetown University,
Washington, DC. He is the author of Welt ohne Krankheit.
Geschichte der internationalen Gesundheitspolitik 1940–1970
(Göttingen 2017).
#1
Thomas Zimmer
PANDEMICS IN HISTORY:
GLOBAL SOLIDARITY IS
THE ONLY WAY FORWARD
Can history teach us how to deal with
COVID-19? Perhaps not. But it reminds us that
when faced with global challenges, we need to
resist the urge to focus on national solidarities.
6
#1 PANDEMICS IN HISTORY: GLOBAL SOLIDARITY IS THE ONLY WAY FORWARD
INTERNATIONAL RESPONSES
Such tension between the realization that pathogens do not
recognize political boundaries and the tendency of states to
try and shut down borders anyway has often characterized
international responses to the threat of pandemics.
7
#1 PANDEMICS IN HISTORY: GLOBAL SOLIDARITY IS THE ONLY WAY FORWARD
8
#1 PANDEMICS IN HISTORY: GLOBAL SOLIDARITY IS THE ONLY WAY FORWARD
9
#1 PANDEMICS IN HISTORY: GLOBAL SOLIDARITY IS THE ONLY WAY FORWARD
10
#1
Perspectives on the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
# 2
Merle Eisenberg
Merle Eisenberg is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the National
Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) at the University
of Maryland. He is a historian of the early middle ages and historical
pandemics. He has published history articles in Past & Present and the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences among others.
11
#
2
Merle Eisenberg
DANGEROUS
COMPARISONS –
HISTORICAL PANDEMICS
AND COVID-19
It's almost impossible to go a day without
stumbling upon an article, podcast or media inter-
view that makes an explicit comparison between
Covid-19 and a pandemic in history. Yet, the one-
sized fits all comparisons don't work in most cases.
12
#2 DANGEROUS COMPARISONS – HISTORICAL PANDEMICS AND COVID-19
COMPARING PANDEMICS
The comparisons with the past tend to proceed the same way.
Is Covid-19 like the medieval Black Death (c. 1346–1352 CE)?
Articles that examine the Black Death force the writer to
admit that the Black Death killed half
the population of Europe, which is “What history
hopefully far different from Covid-19. does offer are
Moreover, the Black Death compar- not global
isons will often get the history wrong by comparisons,
adding in Plague Doctors, for example, but rather
examples of
that only existed centuries after the
local responses
medieval period. What about everyone’s
and effects.”
new “favorite” pandemic, 1918 Influen-
za? Both had similar symptoms, but the
Influenza Pandemic’s impact is hard to know from the politi-
cal, economic, and social changes of the end of World War I.
Its direct impact on human memory and culture will likely
differ from today.
13
#2 DANGEROUS COMPARISONS – HISTORICAL PANDEMICS AND COVID-19
AN ADEQUATE RESPONSE?
The Californian plague example does demonstrate how hard
it was to respond adequately to the outbreak of a disease.
It eventually required close coordination between elected
officials, public health workers, and the local population to
maintain an approach that all of them could support. Just
as moving from a feudal system to a non-feudal system
was hard work in the medieval period with various effects,
we should not take a better future for granted. The work
that goes into these changes can too often get lost in larger
sweeps of disease history. If past pandemics can teach us
anything, it is how hard and how infrequent more just and
equitable outcomes really are.
15
#1
Perspectives on the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
# 3
Costas Tsiamis
Costas Tsiamis is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department
of Microbiology, Medical School of National and Kapodistrian
University of Athens, Greece. His interdisciplinary research
includes historical epidemiology and public health.
16
#
3
Costas Tsiamis
FROM JUSTINIANIC
PLAGUE TO COVID-19:
A TIMELESS STORY?
The news of SARS-CoV-2 spreading across
the world and quarantine measures brings back
to mind the terrible scourges of the past.
17
#3 FROM JUSTINIAN PLAGUE TO COVID-19: A TIMELESS STORY?
The second element of the triad, the host, refers to the human
population and the factors which can contribute to the expo-
sure and susceptibility to the pathogens. The third element
18
#3 FROM JUSTINIAN PLAGUE TO COVID-19: A TIMELESS STORY?
20
#3 FROM JUSTINIAN PLAGUE TO COVID-19: A TIMELESS STORY?
SOCIAL DISTURBANCES
The epidemics of the past, mainly the epidemics of medieval
times, are construed as the predictable result of superstition
and scientific ignorance of contemporary populations. The
social behaviors that emerged during past pandemics seem
strange and bizarre nowadays. But, beyond the cultural dif-
ferences, modern humans appear to share the same collective
fears and emotional reactions with the people of centuries
past. If ignorance was the curse of the past, sciolism is the
curse of modern humans. Despite the evolution of medicine,
in the case of Covid-19 disease, a similar spectrum of individ-
ual and collective social behaviors has emerged. This spec-
trum spans from solidarity with the medical personnel and
patients to conspiracy theories or stigmatization of nations.
21
#1
Perspectives on the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
# 4
Susan Arndt
Susan Arndt is Professor for English Literature at Bayreuth
University. Her areas of expertise are postcolonial and
intersectionality studies. She works on negotiations of whiteness
and gender in British fiction and the trans*textual impact
of African oral literatures on Shakespeare’s plays. Her latest
monograph is a history of sexism entitled Sexismus. Geschichte
einer Unterdrückung (Munich, 2020).
22
#
4
Credit: Excerpt from Obou Gbais: Nouveau Soleil 2, 2020, 40 x 40 cm, Collage & Acryl on canvas
Susan Arndt
BLINDED BY PRIVILEGE.
THE WEST AND THE
REST UNDER LOCKDOWN
Back in March, Kayla Williams, a Black
British woman from South London, died. Only a
day after calling 999. Even though her symptoms
were serious and clearly suggested a Covid-19
infection, the paramedics ranked her case as
“not a priority”.
23
#4 BLINDED BY PRIVILEGE. THE WEST AND THE REST UNDER LOCKDOWN
PRIVILEGES IN CRISIS
The lockdown story of a (white) German Africanist, Raija
Kramer, is telling. In early March, while scientists in China
were already warning the world of a coronavirus pandemic,
Kramer travelled to Cameroon with some students to con-
duct “field research”. When she wanted to return home, there
were no more flights. From their hotel room at the Hilton
in Cameroon, Kramer and her students sent out a (heavily
mediated) cry for help to the German authorities. Out in
the streets, she found that local people were avoiding them,
afraid that they might have carried the virus into Cameroon.
The idea that they might have is not absurd: viruses travel in
bodies, bodies that travel. And because of their nationality,
whiteness, and wealth, white Western bodies are much more
mobile than others.
25
#4 BLINDED BY PRIVILEGE. THE WEST AND THE REST UNDER LOCKDOWN
26
#4 BLINDED BY PRIVILEGE. THE WEST AND THE REST UNDER LOCKDOWN
CONSEQUENCES OF COVID-19
In fact, the economic consequences of the corona crisis are
likely to outlast the pandemic itself. Forecasts warn that
35 to 65 million people will be forced into deadly poverty,
mostly in African and South Asian countries. Poverty is a
pandemic caused by humans, a pandemic that most affects
those whose well-being has already been compromised by
centuries of social inequality. People in the global South are
more likely to suffer social and economic devastation be-
cause of the Covid-19 crisis, just as they have suffered more
from previous global crises. Speaking to the Financial Times,
Angela Merkel and other influential politicians warned of
this prospect. Yet it remains to be seen whether this aware-
ness of what is at stake in this pandemic will translate into
political action, whether it can help the West see beyond the
end of its nose and abandon its century-old presumptions
about white people’s entitlement to safety and protection
at times of crisis, and to prosperity beyond them. After all,
Covid-19 is neither the first nor the last global crisis to re-
mind us how urgently the West needs to face its historical
responsibility — and realize how its privilege stands in the
way of global solidarity.
27
#1
Perspectives on the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
# 5
Marc Grimm
Marc Grimm is a political scientist working at the Centre for
Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence (CPI)
at the faculty of educational science at Bielefeld University.
He is currently leading a project that looks into young people’s
susceptibility to antisemitism in gangsta rap and opportunities
for prevention.
28
#5
Marc Grimm
ANTISEMITISM ON
SOCIAL MEDIA IN TIMES
OF CORONA
Since the beginning of the coronavirus
pandemic antisemitic myths and conspiracy
theories have been thriving.
They meet the demand for narratives that
promise knowledge — a demand that is growing
in times of crisis and uncertainty.
29
#5 ANTISEMITISM ON SOCIAL MEDIA IN TIMES OF CORONA
30
#5 ANTISEMITISM ON SOCIAL MEDIA IN TIMES OF CORONA
A DANGEROUS TREND
I argue that the latter is the case. The severe problem in the
current situation is not only the spreading of certain conspiracy
theories. In addition to that, the dissemination of conspiracy
thinking will have a lasting effect and will increase a danger-
ous trend: the “shift of the phenomenon of antisemitism
from the fringes of society to the mainstream. This shift is
evident in many Western societies and especially in their
social media”. The expansion of conspiracy thinking fuels this
trend. A study from Harvard University found that 31% of US
Americans believe that the virus was intentionally created and
spread, and 29% believe it was exaggerated to hurt president
31
#5 ANTISEMITISM ON SOCIAL MEDIA IN TIMES OF CORONA
“ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION”
Antisemitic and conspiracy thinking are mindsets that do not
allow for social events to be coincidences, unintended or con-
tradicting, as the virus and the policies to stop the virus from
spreading have partially been. Antisemitic and conspiracy
thinking are attempts to (re)gain control; they offer explana-
tions and guidance in a world that is turned upside down due
to something invisible to the human eye. In the eyes of the
beholder, they turn helplessness into orientation, uncertainty
into knowledge, and thereby also offer an emotional benefit:
the consumption of “alternative information” becomes an
experience of self-empowerment, a way to magnify one’s own
ability to “understand” what the crisis is all about and form
an independent viewpoint.
32
#5 ANTISEMITISM ON SOCIAL MEDIA IN TIMES OF CORONA
QUO VADIS?
Colleagues have argued for the need to keep cool and not
give conspiracy activists the attention they are looking for.
I disagree. The conspiracy theorists are thriving because they
have been ignored, because of the wider public thought that
western societies are strong enough to deal with just a few
lunatics. But the lunatics now hold important offices, have
built a network of alternative media, and have an army of
followers who are well prepared for the next crisis — when the
middle-range impact of the current crisis will be kicking in.
It would therefore be wise to take this milieu as seriously as
the conspiracy activists take their conspiracies.
33
#1
Perspectives on the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
# 6
Viv Newman
Viv Newman is an independent author and researcher with
a PhD from the University of Essex where she used to work.
Passionate about uncovering the forgotten women of World
War One, she writes for military publishers Pen & Sword.
34
#6
Credit: pinterest
Viv Newman
35
#6 WE’VE NURSED THIS WAY BEFORE: COVID-19 AND WORLD WAR ONE NURSING
36
#6 WE’VE NURSED THIS WAY BEFORE: COVID-19 AND WORLD WAR ONE NURSING
37
#6 WE’VE NURSED THIS WAY BEFORE: COVID-19 AND WORLD WAR ONE NURSING
RAPID RESPONDERS
Worries about human “resourcing challenges” preoccupy those
staffing Covid-19 hospitals, as was the case with the Western
Front’s Casualty Clearing Station hospitals (CCS). One CCS
might unexpectedly find itself in a quiet sector, another could
suddenly be in a hotspot. But no-one knew when either might
occur. The solution? Rapid Response Teams comprising an
ambulance driver, surgeon, anesthetist, sister, orderly and offi-
cers’ batman were devised. Teams spent between one and two
days working flat out at one CCS before responding to the next
emergency call.
Nursing “in a sea of blood,” Beatrice Hopkinson felt, “I was
right on the battlefield. Never will I forget the sight that met our
eyes.” Army medical services now use helicopters, but the
underlying premise of teamwork and rapid response is identical.
38
#6 WE’VE NURSED THIS WAY BEFORE: COVID-19 AND WORLD WAR ONE NURSING
39
#1
Perspectives on the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
# 7
Ida Milne
Ida Milne is a historian of disease, and European history lecturer
at Carlow College and visiting research fellow at Trinity College
Dublin at the School of Histories and Humanities. She is author
of Stacking the Coffins, Influenza, War and Revolution in Ireland,
1918–19, published by Manchester University Press in 2018.
40
#7
41
#7 THE PANDEMIC PATIENT: LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF THE 1918-19 INFLUENZA
42
#7 THE PANDEMIC PATIENT: LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF THE 1918-19 INFLUENZA
43
#7 THE PANDEMIC PATIENT: LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF THE 1918-19 INFLUENZA
EXPERIENCES REMAIN
The broader lesson from these interviews with child survivors
of the 1918–19 influenza pandemic for this current crisis is
that this too is not just about the now: this experience will
remain with all of us — but particularly with the bereaved and
Covid-19 survivors — for the rest of our lives.
44
#1
Perspectives on the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
# 8
Astrid Erll
Astrid Erll is Professor of English and initiator of the
Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform at Goethe University
Frankfurt. She is also co-editor of the De Gruyter series
Media and Cultural Memory.
45
#8
Astrid Erll
46
#8 WILL COVID-19 BECOME PART OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY?
47
#8 WILL COVID-19 BECOME PART OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY?
48
#8 WILL COVID-19 BECOME PART OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY?
A CORONA GENERATION?
But there are also bottom-up processes of collective memory.
One is generational remembering. The corona pandemic has
all the ingredients of a generation-defining experience.
For those young people who are now in what the sociologist
49
#8 WILL COVID-19 BECOME PART OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY?
50
#1
Perspectives on the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
# 9
Tue Søvsø
Tue Søvsø holds an M.A. in Latin and Greek from the University
of Copenhagen. He works on Cicero and Stoic Philosophy as
a doctoral student at the research training group “Philosophy,
Science and the Sciences” in Berlin.
51
#9
Tue Søvsø
A CRISIS OF VALUE.
STOIC RESPONSES
TO THE PANDEMIC
The corona pandemic has affected all of us
and raised many questions about the ways we
organise our lives. Famed for their ability to cope
with such crises, Greek and Roman Stoics offer
an intriguing perspective on the challenging
questions facing us.
52
#9 A CRISIS OF VALUE. STOIC RESPONSES TO THE PANDEMIC
A CRISIS OF VALUE
Like all crises, this one has worked like a developing agent
exposing the unsaid priorities underlying our public and per-
sonal policies and forcing us to reconsider them. Most of us
have probably had personal revelations about the habits and
54
#9 A CRISIS OF VALUE. STOIC RESPONSES TO THE PANDEMIC
The crucial insight that the Stoics bring to the table, however,
is that this new awareness is only of fleeting significance if
it does not effect a lasting change in the structure of our
language and thoughts. They framed this process as an almost
physical exercise. We need to work out and redefine the con-
cepts we use, establish their mutual relations and constantly
train ourselves in applying them correctly to the things we
observe. This is hard work, but if we succeed it brings us the
control over our actions and emotions that the Stoics associat-
ed with virtue.
55
#9 A CRISIS OF VALUE. STOIC RESPONSES TO THE PANDEMIC
56
#1
Perspectives on the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
# 10
Irene Kacandes
Irene Kacandes holds the Dartmouth Professorship at Dartmouth
College, where she teaches in the fields of German Studies,
Comparative Literature, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and
Jewish Studies. Author or editor of eight volumes, her most recent
publications include Let’s Talk About Death (2015) and Eastern Europe
Unmapped (2017). Irene is also the series editor of the De Gruyter
series Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies.
57
#
10
Irene Kacandes
HOW CO-WITNESSING
COULD TRANSFORM THE
POST-PANDEMIC WORLD
Of the metaphors circulating in the media
to describe the covid-19 pandemic, the one
I find most helpful deploys the image that the
whole world is experiencing the same storm, but
groups of us are in very different kinds of boats
trying to weather it.
58
#
10 HOW CO-WITNESSING COULD TRANSFORM THE POST-PANDEMIC WORLD
Let’s get back to the boats. Some of them have cabins with
well-stocked galleys, lots of soap and water, computers, good
internet and radar. Some are just an open hull. Some are leak-
ing. Some boats are large with only a few on board; some tiny
and crowded. Many people are actually in the water trying not
to drown. In a storm this bad, people’s chances of making it
to shore vary enormously.
59
#
10 HOW CO-WITNESSING COULD TRANSFORM THE POST-PANDEMIC WORLD
There’s proof that that matters. To take just one statistic of the
now thousands available: African Americans comprise 32 % of
the population of Louisiana, and 70 % of the state’s deaths due
to covid-19.
60
#
10 HOW CO-WITNESSING COULD TRANSFORM THE POST-PANDEMIC WORLD
Experts cite three main reasons that racial and ethnic minorities
are dying from Covid-19 at disproportionate rates:
61
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10 HOW CO-WITNESSING COULD TRANSFORM THE POST-PANDEMIC WORLD
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10 HOW CO-WITNESSING COULD TRANSFORM THE POST-PANDEMIC WORLD
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#1
Perspectives on the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
# 11
Hannes Bajohr
Hannes Bajohr is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department
of Arts, Media, Philosophy of the University of Basel, Switzerland.
He has published on German intellectual history, digital culture,
and the Anthropocene. With De Gruyter, he edited the volume
Der Anthropos im Anthropozän. He is the German translator
of the works of Judith Shklar.
64
#
11
Hannes Bajohr
COVID, AN INJUSTICE
In the Covid crisis, misfortune becomes
injustice, as inaction makes governments
passively unjust. Judith Shklar helps us
to understand why the line between “natural”
and “human-made” crises is highly artificial.
65
#
11 COVID, AN INJUSTICE
NATURAL DISASTERS
Natural disasters are never simply natural. The climate crisis
is the most obvious example: as humans continue to blast
CO2 into the atmosphere, acidify the oceans, and bury nu-
clear waste, their impact will leave a permanent mark in the
geological record for millennia to come. The Anthropocene
— as the age of human intervention in nature has come to
be called — shows how the line between what is natural and
what is human is moveable and all but rigid.
66
#
11 COVID, AN INJUSTICE
A “LIBERALISM OF FEAR”
Shklar’s notion of passive injustice is driven by what she
calls a “Liberalism of Fear.” Not interested in highest goals,
such as a specific idea of the good life, or an overarching
ideology society should enact, Shklar is instead concerned
with the conditions of freedom — with the circumstances
that need to be in place to have every individual design out
their own concept of the good life. Such a liberalism is neg-
ative and strives to avoid a highest evil: cruelty and fear, and
that includes the fear of, or the secondary consequences of,
a health crisis.
CONSEQUENCES
The Covid pandemic shows that such a seemingly negativis-
tic program has powerful consequences. Fear and cruelty are
on our minds once more, and the role
“The concept of of the state to prevent them or to less-
passive injustice, en their impact has become apparent
undergirded by a again. The concept of passive injustice,
liberalism of fear, undergirded by a liberalism of fear,
gives us a measure gives us a measure at hand to assess
at hand to assess
how the crisis has been handled. It also
how the crisis has
allows us to formulate a vision for a
been handled.”
society that would have mitigated its
effects in the first place by looking at
68
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11 COVID, AN INJUSTICE
69
#1
Perspectives on the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
# 12
Uwe Schütte
Uwe Schütte is a Reader in German at Aston University,
Birmingham, and Privatdozent at the University of Göttingen.
He is an expert on contemporary German language literature
and pop music, and the author and editor of more than twenty
books, including seven on W.G. Sebald.
70
#
12
Credit: Privat
Uwe Schütte
W.G. SEBALD & THE
NATURAL HISTORY
OF COVID-19
The writer and academic W.G. Sebald
(1944–2001) is considered one of the most
important literary voices of the late 20th
century. Less widely known is the pessimistic
philosophy of history that underwrites his
books: what might Sebald have said about
COVID-19?
71
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12 W.G. SEBALD & THE NATURAL HISTORY OF COVID-19
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12 W.G. SEBALD & THE NATURAL HISTORY OF COVID-19
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12 W.G. SEBALD & THE NATURAL HISTORY OF COVID-19
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12 W.G. SEBALD & THE NATURAL HISTORY OF COVID-19
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12 W.G. SEBALD & THE NATURAL HISTORY OF COVID-19
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#1
Perspectives on the pandemic
Thinking in a state of exception
# 13
Doris Bachmann-Medick
Doris Bachmann-Medick is Senior Research Fellow at the
International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC),
Justus Liebig University Giessen. Her research focuses on the
diversity of cultural turns and translations in globalizing societies.
She is co-editor (with Jens Kugele and Ansgar Nünning) of the
De Gruyter volume Futures of the Study of Culture.
77
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13
Doris Bachmann-Medick
THE HUMANITIES –
MARGINALIZED AFTER
CORONA?
A crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic that
affects the very core of human existence could
also endanger the existence of the humanities
and the study of culture. Will a “pandemic turn”
sweep across all research and scholarly inquiry?
78
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13 THE HUMANITIES – MARGINALIZED AFTER CORONA?
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13 THE HUMANITIES – MARGINALIZED AFTER CORONA?
INDISPENSABLE HUMANITIES
No! On the contrary: the humanities and the study of culture
are indispensable, especially given the need for a critical ap-
80
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13 THE HUMANITIES – MARGINALIZED AFTER CORONA?
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