L’imaginaire De La Manipulation Dévoilé en Deux Créations Comiques Sous La Pandémie De Covid-19

The subtle unveiling of the imaginary of manipulation through comic texts can contribute to a better understanding of mechanisms of social protection and mitigation in times of crisis. This article examines representations of the COVID-19 pandemic through two distinct literary works that share a common feature: the presence and creative use of pandemic-related vocabulary. The analysis focuses on Lucian Dan Teodorovici’s teenage novella “Silvestru și Marele Dictator” (2020) [Silvester and the Big Dictator] and Olivier Auroy’s “Dicorona” (2020), a “dictionnaire de mots-valises” based on portmanteau words. In Teodorovici’s novella, the pre-existing vocabulary associated with the pandemic is creatively transformed, notably through the invention of terms such as “VIM-20”, which designates the deadly virus. The resulting fictional world reconfigures the relationship between humans, animals, and the virus: while the pandemic was associated in public discourse with zoonotic transmission involving animals such as bats or pangolins, Silvestru, an intelligent tomcat belonging to a rural family living near a large city, assumes the role of savior. In “Dicorona”, Auroy similarly adopts a playful linguistic strategy, constructing portmanteau words through the combination of lexical elements derived either from rumors and fake news or from associative connections between ordinary dictionary words. Each newly coined term is accompanied by a brief explanatory narrative, contributing to a humorous reinterpretation of pandemic-related discourse. The comparative analysis draws on theoretical perspectives concerning the social imaginary, particularly the approaches developed by Cornelius Castoriadis (2005) and Dan-Gabriel Sîmbotin (2016), as well as Henri Bergson’s (1900) theory of the comic. By examining linguistic invention, humor, and fictionalization, the article argues that comic representations of the pandemic can expose and critically reconfigure the mechanisms through which fear, manipulation, and misinformation operate within the social imaginary