{"id":917,"date":"2020-03-18T21:18:36","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T21:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/?p=917"},"modified":"2020-06-06T13:29:21","modified_gmt":"2020-06-06T13:29:21","slug":"the-virus-and-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy-blog\/2020\/03\/18\/the-virus-and-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Virus and Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A more or less chronological\nselection of Philosophers on the virus:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

March 2020 (updated version (June 2020) available here<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s important in times of crisis,\nthat we not forget to think. And indeed, this apparently exceptional moment has\ngiven rise to thought among contemporary philosophers, in particular those in\nthe continental tradition, for whom this event confirms or nuances or reminds\nthem of certain things they\u2019ve been thinking about for quite a while now, or it\nreminds them of moments from their tradition which suddenly stand out as\nrelevant and significant in thinking what is going on today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here is a\nselection of fascinating debates on the matter, that have appeared in the\npress, largely online, over the last few weeks, and it constitutes a great\nexample of the vitality of philosophy and the way in which it can be deployed\nconstantly to reconceptualise events that are happening to us, either\nfrequently or only from time to time, as they seem to be today in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We start with an\nexcerpt on the plague and the way power (disciplinary power) was exerted in\ntimes of plague, by one of the philosophers who coined the notion of\n\u2018biopolitics\u2019, which is to say the application of law to (biological) life, and\nthat means political power governing and controlling life, which according to\nsome was by no means always the case \u2014 since the place of life, mere life, bare\nsurvival, the reproduction of physical, biological life, was understood in\nAristotle and thus ancient Greece to be the home (the oikos<\/em>) and not the\ncity (the polis<\/em>): life and death, health and disease were taken to be\nprivate matters, matters for private life; not public life, civic life, the\nlife of the citizen, the (for Aristotle) truly human life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu\/coronavirus-and-philosophers\/?fbclid=IwAR3PxeG8wd9R3biaz4Y3kwVOQHFyKFFyGoCesn6rq13NC2M2PZapI0svqPA<\/a>\n:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michel Foucault<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

From\n\u201cDiscipline and Punish. <\/em><\/strong>The Birth of the\nPrison\u201d<\/strong><\/em>, translated by A. Sheridan, pp. 195-228.\nVintage Books, 1995.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(in collaboration with the Journal \u201cAntinomie\u201d,\nhttps:\/\/antinomie.it\/)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following, according to an order published at the end of the\nseventeenth century, were the measures to be taken when the plague appeared in\na town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, a strict spatial partitioning: the closing of the town and\nits outlying districts, a prohibition to leave the town on pain of death, the\nkilling of all stray animals; the division of the town into distinct quarters,\neach governed by an intendant. Each street is placed under the authority of a\nsyndic, who keeps it under surveillance; if he leaves the street, he will be\ncondemned to death. On the appointed day, everyone is ordered to stay indoors:\nit is forbidden to leave on pain of death. The syndic himself comes to lock the\ndoor of each house from the outside; he takes the key with him and hands it\nover to the intendant of the quarter; the intendant keeps it until the end of\nthe quarantine. Each family will have made its own provisions; but, for bread\nand wine, small wooden canals are set up between the street and the interior of\nthe houses, thus allowing each person to receive his ration without\ncommunicating with the suppliers and other residents; meat, \ufb01sh and herbs will\nbe hoisted up into the houses with pulleys and baskets. If it is absolutely\nnecessary to leave the house, it will be done in turn, avoiding any meeting.\nOnly the intendants, syndics and guards will move about the streets and also,\nbetween the infected houses, from one corpse to another, the \u201ccrows\u201d, who can\nbe left to die: these are \u201cpeople of little substance who carry the sick, bury\nthe dead, clean and do many vile and abject of\ufb01ces\u201d. It is a segmented,\nimmobile, frozen space. Each individual is \ufb01xed in his place. And, if he moves,\nhe does so at the risk of his life, contagion or punishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspection functions ceaselessly. The gaze is alert everywhere: \u201cA\nconsiderable body of militia, commanded by good of\ufb01cers and men of substance\u201d,\nguards at the gates, at the town hall and in every quarter to ensure the prompt\nobedience of the people and the most absolute authority of the magistrates, \u201cas\nalso to observe all disorder, theft and extortion\u201d. At each of the town gates\nthere will be an observation post; at the end of each street sentinels. Every\nday, the intendant visits the quarter in his charge, inquires whether the\nsyndics have carried out their tasks, whether the inhabitants have anything to\ncomplain of; they \u201cobserve their actions\u201d. Every day, too, the syndic goes into\nthe street for which he is responsible; stops before each house: gets all the\ninhabitants to appear at the windows (those who live overlooking the courtyard\nwill be allocated a window looking onto the street at which no one but they may\nshow themselves); he calls each of them by name; informs himself as to the\nstate of each and every one of them \u201cin which respect the inhabitants will be\ncompelled to speak the truth under pain of death\u201d; if someone does not appear\nat the window, the syndic must ask why: \u201cIn this way he will \ufb01nd out easily\nenough whether dead or sick are being concealed.\u201d Everyone locked up in his\ncage, everyone at his window, answering to his name and showing himself when\nasked \u2014 it is the great review of the living and the dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This surveillance is based on a system of permanent registration:\nreports from the syndics to the intendants, from the intendants to the\nmagistrates or mayor At the beginning of the \u201clock up\u201d, the role of each of the\ninhabitants present in the town is laid down, one by one; this document bears\n\u201cthe name, age, sex of everyone, notwithstanding his condition\u201d: a copy is sent\nto the intendant of the quarter, another to the of\ufb01ce of the town hall, another\nto enable the syndic to make his daily roll call. Everything that may be\nobserved during the course of the visits \u2014 deaths, illnesses, complaints,\nirregularities is noted down and transmitted to the intendants and magistrates.\nThe magistrates have complete control over medical treatment; they have\nappointed a physician in charge; no other practitioner may treat, no apothecary\nprepare medicine, no confessor visit a sick person without having received from\nhim a written note \u201cto prevent anyone from concealing and dealing with those\nsick of the contagion, unknown to the magistrates\u201d. The registration of the\npathological must be constantly centralized. The relation of each individual to\nhis disease and to his death passes through the representatives of power, the\nregistration they make of it, the decisions they take on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five or six days after the beginning of the quarantine, the\nprocess of purifying the houses one by one is begun. All the inhabitants are\nmade to leave; in each room \u201cthe furniture and goods\u201d are raised from the\nground or suspended from the air; perfume is poured around the room; after\ncarefully sealing the windows, doors and even the keyholes with wax, the\nperfume is set alight. Finally, the entire house is closed while the perfume is\nconsumed; those who have carried out the work are searched, as they were on\nentry, \u201cin the presence of the residents of the house, to see that they did not\nhave something on their persons as they left that they did not have on\nentering\u201d. Four hours later, the residents are allowed to re-enter their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which\nthe individuals are inserted in a \ufb01xed place, in which the slightest movements\nare supervised, in which all events are recorded, in which an uninterrupted\nwork of writing links the centre and periphery, in which power is exercised\nwithout division, according to a continuous hierarchical \ufb01gure, in which each\nindividual is constantly located, examined and distributed among the living\nbeings, the sick and the dead \u2014 all this constitutes a compact model of the\ndisciplinary mechanism. The plague is met by order; its function is to sort out\nevery possible confusion: that of the disease, which is transmitted when bodies\nare mixed together; that of the evil, which is increased when fear and death\novercome prohibitions. It lays down for each individual his place, his body,\nhis disease and his death, his well-being, by means of an omnipresent and\nomniscient power that subdivides itself in a regular, uninterrupted way even to\nthe ultimate determination of the individual, of what characterizes him, of\nwhat belongs to him, of what happens to him. Against the plague, which is a\nmixture, discipline brings into play its power, which is one of analysis. A\nwhole literary \ufb01ction of the festival grew up around the plague: suspended\nlaws, lifted prohibitions, the frenzy of passing time, bodies mingling together\nwithout respect, individuals unmasked, abandoning their statutory identity and\nthe \ufb01gure under which they had been recognized, allowing a quite different\ntruth to appear. But there was also a political dream of the plague, which was\nexactly its reverse: not the collective festival, but strict divisions; not\nlaws transgressed, but the penetration of regulation into even the smallest\ndetails of everyday life through the mediation of the complete hierarchy that\nassured the capillary functioning of power; not masks that were put on and\ntaken off, but the assignment to each individual of his \u201ctrue\u201d name, his \u201ctrue\u201d\nplace, his \u201ctrue\u201d body, his \u201ctrue\u201d disease. The plague as a form, at once real\nand imaginary, of disorder had as its medical and political correlative\ndiscipline. Behind the disciplinary mechanisms can be read the haunting memory\nof \u201ccontagions\u201d, of the plague, of rebellions, crimes, vagabondage, desertions,\npeople who appear and disappear, live and die in disorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it is true that the leper gave rise to rituals of exclusion,\nwhich to a certain extent provided the model for and general form of the great\nCon\ufb01nement, then the plague gave rise to disciplinary projects. Rather than the\nmassive, binary division between one set of people and another, it called for\nmultiple separations, individualizing distributions, an organization in depth\nof surveillance and control, an intensi\ufb01cation and a rami\ufb01cation of power. The\nleper was caught up in a practice of rejection, of exile-enclosure; he was left\nto his doom in a mass among which it was useless to differentiate; those sick\nof the plague were caught up in a meticulous tactical partitioning in which\nindividual differentiations were the constricting effects of a power that\nmultiplied, articulated and subdivided itself; the great con\ufb01nement on the one\nhand; the correct training on the other. The leper and his separation; the\nplague and its segmentations. The \ufb01rst is marked; the second analysed and\ndistributed. The exile of the leper and the arrest of the plague do not bring\nwith them the same political dream. The \ufb01rst is that of a pure community, the\nsecond that of a disciplined society. Two ways of exercising power over men, of\ncontrolling their relations, of separating out their dangerous mixtures. The\nplague-stricken town, traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance,\nobservation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive\npower that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies \u2013 this is the\nutopia of the perfectly governed city. The plague (envisaged as a possibility\nat least) is the trial in the course of which one may de\ufb01ne ideally the exercise\nof disciplinary power. In order to make rights and laws function according to\npure theory, the jurists place themselves in imagination in the state of\nnature; in order to see perfect disciplines functioning, rulers dreamt of the\nstate of plague. Underlying disciplinary projects the image of the plague\nstands for all forms of confusion and disorder; just as the image of the leper,\ncut off from all human contact, underlies projects of exclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

___________<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Giorgio\nAgamben<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nInvention of an Epidemic<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Published\nin Italian on Quodlibet, <\/em>https:\/\/www.quodlibet.it\/giorgio-agamben-l-invenzione-di-un-epidemia<\/strong><\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

26\/02\/2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faced with\nthe frenetic, irrational and entirely unfounded emergency measures adopted\nagainst an alleged epidemic of coronavirus, we should begin from the\ndeclaration issued by the National Research Council (CNR), which states not\nonly that \u201cthere is no SARS-CoV2 epidemic in Italy\u201d, but also that \u201cthe\ninfection, according to the epidemiologic data available as of today and based\non tens of thousands of cases, causes mild\/moderate symptoms (a sort of\ninfluenza) in 80-90% of cases. In 10-15% of cases a pneumonia may develop, but\none with a benign outcome in the large majority of cases. It has been estimated\nthat only 4% of patients require intensive therapy\u201d.
\nIf this is the real situation, why do the media and the authorities do their\nutmost to spread a state of panic, thus provoking an authentic state of\nexception with serious limitations on movement and a suspension of daily life\nin entire regions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nTwo factors can help explain such a disproportionate response. First and\nforemost, what is once again manifest is the tendency to use a state of exception\nas a normal paradigm for government. The legislative decree immediately\napproved by the government \u201cfor hygiene and public safety reasons\u201d actually\nproduces an authentic militarization \u201cof the municipalities and areas with the\npresence of at least one person who tests positive and for whom the source of\ntransmission is unknown, or in which there is at least one case that is not\nascribable to a person who recently returned from an area already affected by\nthe virus\u201d. Such a vague and undetermined definition will make it possible to\nrapidly extend the state of exception to all regions, as it\u2019s almost impossible\nthat other such cases will not appear elsewhere. Let\u2019s consider the serious\nlimitations of freedom the decree contains: a) a prohibition against any\nindividuals leaving the affected municipality or area; b) a prohibition against\nanyone from outside accessing the affected municipality or area; c) the\nsuspension of events or initiatives of any nature and of any form of gatherings\nin public or private places, including those of a cultural, recreational,\nsporting and religious nature, including enclosed spaces if they are open to\nthe public; d) the closure of kindergartens, childcare services and schools of\nall levels, as well as the attendance of school, higher education activities\nand professional courses, except for distance learning; e) the closure to the\npublic of museums and other cultural institutions and spaces as listed in\narticle 101 of the code of cultural and landscape heritage, pursuant to Legislative\nDecree 22 January 2004, no. 42. All regulations on free access to those\ninstitutions and spaces are also suspended; f) suspension of all educational\ntrips both in Italy and abroad; g) suspension of all public examination\nprocedures and all activities of public offices, without prejudice to the\nprovision of essential and public utility services; h) the enforcement of\nquarantine measures and active surveillance of individuals who have had close\ncontacts with confirmed cases of infection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nThe disproportionate reaction to what according to the CNR is something not too\ndifferent from the normal flus that affect us every year is quite blatant. It\nis almost as if with terrorism exhausted as a cause for exceptional measures,\nthe invention of an epidemic offered the ideal pretext for scaling them up\nbeyond any limitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nThe other no less disturbing factor is the state of fear that in recent years\nhas evidently spread among individual consciences and that translates into an\nauthentic need for situations of collective panic for which the epidemic\nprovides once again the ideal pretext. Therefore, in a perverse vicious circle,\nthe limitations of freedom imposed by governments are accepted in the name of a\ndesire for safety that was created by the same governments that are now\nintervening to satisfy it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

______________<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean-Luc\nNancy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Viral\nException<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Published\nin Italian on \u201cAntinomie\u201d, https:\/\/antinomie.it\/index.php\/2020\/02\/27\/eccezione-virale\/<\/strong><\/a> \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

27\/02\/2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Giorgio Agamben, an old friend, argues that the coronavirus is\nhardly different from a normal flu. He forgets that for the \u201cnormal\u201d flu there\nis a vaccine that has been proven effective. And even that needs to be\nreadapted to viral mutations year after year. Despite this, the \u201cnormal\u201d flu\nalways kills several people, while coronavirus, against which there is no\nvaccine, is evidently capable of causing far higher levels of mortality. The\ndifference (according to sources of the same type as those Agamben uses) is\nabout 1 to 30: it does not seem an insignificant difference to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Giorgio states that governments take advantage of all sorts of\npretexts to continuously establish states of exception. But he fails to note\nthat the exception is indeed becoming the rule in a world where technical\ninterconnections of all kinds (movement, transfers of every type, impregnation\nor spread of substances, and so on) are reaching a hitherto unknown intensity\nthat is growing at the same rate as the population. Even in rich countries this\nincrease in population entails a longer life expectancy, hence an increase in\nthe number of elderly people and, in general, of people at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We must be careful not to hit the wrong target: an entire\ncivilization is in question, there is no doubt about it. There is a sort of\nviral exception \u2013 biological, computer-scientific, cultural \u2013 which is\npandemic. Governments are nothing more than grim executioners, and taking it\nout on them seems more like a diversionary manoeuvre than a political\nreflection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mentioned that Giorgio is an old friend. And I apologize for\nbringing up a personal recollection, but I am not abandoning a register of\ngeneral reflection by doing so. Almost thirty years ago doctors decided I\nneeded a heart transplant. Giorgio was one of the very few who advised me not\nto listen to them. If I had followed his advice, I would have probably died\nsoon enough. It is possible to make a mistake. Giorgio is nevertheless a spirit\nof such finesse and kindness that one may define him \u2013 without the slightest\nirony \u2013 as exceptional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

____________<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roberto\nEsposito<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cured to\nthe Bitter End<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Published\nin Italian on Antinomie<\/em>,  https:\/\/antinomie.it\/index.php\/2020\/02\/28\/curati-a-oltranza\/<\/strong><\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

28\/02\/2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this\ntext by Nancy I find all the traits that have always characterized him \u2013 in\nparticular an intellectual generosity I was personally affected by in the past,\ndrawing immense inspiration from his thinking, especially in my work on\ncommunities. What interrupted our dialogue at one point was Nancy\u2019s sharp\nopposition to the paradigm of biopolitics, to which he has always opposed, as\nin this text, the relevance of technological apparatus \u2013 as if the two things\nwere necessarily in contrast. While in fact even the term \u201cviral\u201d itself points\nto a biopolitical contamination between different languages \u2013 political,\nsocial, medical and technological \u2013 united by the same immune syndrome, meant\nas a polarity semantically opposed to the lexicon of communitas<\/em>.\nThough Derrida himself used the category of immunisation extensively, Nancy\u2019s\nrefusal to confront himself with the paradigm of biopolitics was probably\ninfluenced by the dystonia with regard to Foucault that he inherited from\nDerrida. In any case, we are talking about three of the most important contemporary\nphilosophers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It remains a fact that anyone with eyes to see cannot deny the\nconstant deployment of biopolitics. From the intervention of biotechnology on\ndomains that were once considered exclusively natural, like birth and death, to\nbioterrorism, the management of immigration and more or less serious epidemics,\nall political conflicts today have the relation between politics and biological\nlife at their core. But this reference to Foucault in itself should lead us to\nnot losing sight of the historically differentiated character of biopolitical\nphenomena. One thing is claiming, as Foucault does, that in the last two and\nhalf centuries politics and biology have progressively formed an ever tighter\nknot, with problematic and sometimes tragic results. Another is to assimilate\nincomparable incidents and experiences. I would personally avoid making any\nsort of comparison between maximum security prisons and a two-week quarantine\nin the Po Lowlands. From the legal point of view, of course, emergency decreeing,\nlong since applied even to cases like this one, in which it is not absolutely\nnecessary, pushes politics towards procedures of exception that may in the long\nrun undermine the balance of power in favour of the executive branch. But to\ntalk of risks to democracy in this case seems to me an exaggeration to say the\nleast. I think that we should try to separate levels and distinguish between\nlong-running processes and recent events. With regard to the former, politics\nand medicine have been tied in mutual implications for at least three\ncenturies, something that has ultimately transformed both. On the one hand this\nhas led to a process of medicalization of politics, which, seemingly unburdened\nof any ideological limitations, shows itself as more and more dedicated to\n\u201ccuring\u201d its citizens from risks it is often responsible for emphasizing. On\nthe other we witness a politicization of medicine, invested with tasks of\nsocial control that do not belong to it \u2013 which explains the extremely\nheterogeneous assessments virologists are making on the nature and gravity of\nthe coronavirus. Both these tendencies deform politics compared to its classic\nprofile. Also because its objectives no longer comprehend single individuals or\nsocial classes, but segments of population differentiated according to health,\nage, gender or even ethnic group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But once again, with regard to absolutely legitimate concerns, it\nis necessary not to lose our sense of proportion. It seems to me that what is\nhappening in Italy today, with the chaotic and rather grotesque overlapping of\nnational and regional prerogatives, has more the character of a breakdown of\npublic authorities than that of a dramatic totalitarian grip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 ___________<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riposte by\nJean-Luc Nancy to Roberto Esposito (through email to Sergio Benvenuto):<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDear Robert,\nneither \u201cbiology\u201d nor \u201cpolitics\u201d are precisely determined terms today. I would\nactually say the contrary. That\u2019s why I have no use for their assemblage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Best regards,\nJean-Luc\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

_____________<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2-III-2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sergio Benvenuto<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome to\nSeclusion<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Published\nin Italian on Antinomie,<\/em>https:\/\/antinomie.it\/index.php\/2020\/03\/05\/benvenuto-in-clausura\/<\/strong><\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am\nneither a virologist nor an epidemiologist, yet the idea has formed in my mind\nthat \u2013 though over seventy, and hence among the most vulnerable \u2013 I have little\nto fear from the coronavirus for my<\/em> health.\n\u201cFor mine\u201d,<\/em> for\nmere reasons of probability, like when I fly on a plane: it could crash, but\nit\u2019s highly unlikely. In fact, so far only around 3000[1]<\/strong><\/a> people\nworldwide have died as a consequence of the virus. Practically nothing compared\nto the 80,000 killed by common flus in 2019. Those who have died in Italy from\nthe epidemic (over 50 at the moment of writing[2]<\/strong><\/a>) are\nprobably less than those killed in car accidents plus worker fatalities. In\nshort, I am not so much scared of contagion, but I\u2019m more concerned about the\neconomic backlash for a country like mine, in constant decline since 1990s.\nAfter all, poverty kills too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I also\nknow that my relative disregard, though rationally based, is civically\nreprehensible: were I a good citizen I should behave as if<\/em> I\nwere panic-stricken. Because everything that\u2019s being done in Italy (closing\nschools, stadiums, museums, theatres and so on) has a purely preventive\nfunction, it only slows down the spread of the virus. It plays on large\nnumbers, but appeals to each particular being<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The panic\nthat has stricken Italy (but not only, all over the world people are talking\nabout nothing else) was basically a political choice \u2013 or a biopolitical one,\nas Roberto Esposito stresses \u2013 established first and foremost by the World\nHealth Organization. Because today, in an era when the great democracies are\nproducing grotesque leaderships, it\u2019s the great supranational organizations\nlike the WHO \u2013 and the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary\nFund, the European Central Bank, the other central banks, and so on \u2013 that\n(fortunately) take the real decisions, thus partly redressing the neo-fascist\nwhims of today\u2019s democracies. Tedros Adhanom, the Ethiopian who is Director\nGeneral of the WHO, has clearly stated the need for prevention: he knows\nthat for the time being<\/em> Covid-19 is not causing disasters and\nthat maybe in the end it could turn out to have been nothing more than an\ninsidious influenza. But it could also turn into what the so-called \u201cSpanish\u201d\nflu became in 1918: the latter infected a third of the planet\u2019s population\ncausing something between 20 and 50 million deaths, more victims than all\nmilitary casualties during the First World War. In other words, what\u2019s really\nfrightening Is not what\nwe know<\/em>, but what\nwe do not know about the virus<\/em>, and there\u2019s very little we do know\nabout it. We are getting to know it day by day and so it creates the anxiety \u2013\nby no means irrational \u2013 of the unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note that in the case of the \u201cSpanish\u201d flu political power acted\nin exactly the opposite way as it is doing today: it concealed the epidemic,\nbecause in most cases the countries involved were at war. It was named the\n\u201cSpanish\u201d flu simply because at the time it was only in Spain, which was not at\nwar, that the media talked about it (but apparently the flu originated in the\nUnited States). Political power today (which is, I stress once more,\nincreasingly supranational in economics too) has chosen the strategy of panic,\nso as to encourage people to isolate the virus. And indeed, the isolation of\nthe infected still remains, after centuries, the best strategy to suppress\nincurable epidemics. Leprosy was contained in Europe \u2013 as Foucault too stresses\n\u2013 precisely by isolating lepers as much as possible, often relegating them to\nfaraway islands, like Molokai in Hawaii, where various movies have been filmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August 2011 I was in New York when it was about to be hit by\nHurricane Irene, which had already devastated the Antilles. I was struck by the\nway experts and politicians on the media all gave frankly quite cataclysmic\nmessages to citizens: \u201cit will be a complete disaster \u2013 the refrain was \u2013\nbecause New Yorkers couldn\u2019t care less, they\u2019re snobs\u201d. But it turned out that\nthey followed the guidelines scrupulously (even I vacated my garden respecting\nthe precepts) and Irene crossed New York causing no damage. So, did those\nexperts and politicians get it all wrong, or did they have a bit of fun\nterrifying the population of New York? No, a disaster was avoided. In some\ncases, spreading terror can be wiser than taking things \u201cphilosophically\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s imagine that Italy as a whole \u2013 from the media to government\nofficials \u2013 had opted for the \u201cSpanish\u201d strategy, deciding not to take any\nprecautions and allowing Covid-19 to spread across the country like a normal\nflu. Every other country, including other European states, would have\nimmediately isolated Italy, considering the whole country a hotbed: something\nthat would have caused far greater economic damage than the considerable one\nItaly is enduring now. When others are scared \u2013 for example the Israelis and\nQataris, who have prohibited Italians from entering their countries \u2013 we\u2019re\nbetter off being scared too. Sometimes being scared is an act of courage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s imagine that, once allowed to spread at will 20 million\nItalians caught the virus: if it\u2019s true, as the earliest calculations indicate,\nthat COVID-19 is deadly for 2% of those infected, this would have led to the\ndeath of around 400,000 Italians, mainly senior citizens. A hypothesis many do\nnot consider entirely negative, because it would allow our old-age pensions\nsystem to breathe: Why not trim down a few oldies in a country that\u2019s ageing by\nthe minute? is what they think without saying it. But I don\u2019t think public\nopinion would have accepted 400,000 deaths. The oppositions would have risen\nup, the government would have been ousted by popular acclaim and the far-right\nleader Salvini would have won the elections with at least 60% of the popular\nvote. In short, the precautionary measures that have been taken, however\npainful \u2013 especially because of the economic damage \u2013 are the lesser evil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The measures taken in Italy are not therefore, as one of my\nfavourite philosophers, Giorgio Agamben, argues, the result of the despotic\ninstinct of the ruling classes, who are viscerally passionate about the \u201cstate\nof exception\u201d. Thinking that the measures adopted in China, South Korea, Italy\nand so on are the consequence of a conspiracy means falling into what other\nphilosophers have called \u201cconspiratorial theories of history\u201d. I would call\nthem paranoiac interpretations of history, like the millions who believe 9\/11\nwas a CIA plot. My domestic worker, a very good-natured woman, is convinced\nthat the epidemic was schemed by the \u201cArabs\u201d, by which I suppose she means the\nMuslims. Whether we\u2019re influenced by our small parish or by Carl Schmitt,\nwhether ignorant or extremely learned, many of us need to make up our own\nplague-spreaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am often surprised how often many philosophers need to be\nreminded of something that, paraphrasing Hamlet, sounds like: There are more\npolitics in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I say I\u2019m convinced that this epidemic will produce far\ngreater economic calamities (a crisis like in 2008?) than medical ones, I place\nmyself within an optimistic perspective, which could be disproved in the next\ndays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as from\ntomorrow, I too, though chuckling somewhat, will try to be a good citizen. I\nwill avoid certain public places, I won\u2019t shake hands of persons I\u2019ll meet. I\nlive in Rome, and I will not visit friends in the North and I will discourage\nthem from coming to see me[3]<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, the effects of this epidemic will strengthen a tendency\nthat would have in any case prevailed, and of which \u201cworking remotely\u201d or\n\u201cwfh\u201d, working from home and avoiding the office, is only one aspect. It will\nbe less and less common for us to wake up in the morning and board public or\nprivate vehicles to reach the workplace; more and more we will work on our\ncomputers from our homes, which will also become our offices. And thanks to the\nAmazon and Netflix revolutions, we will no longer need to go out to do the\nshopping or to theatres to see movies, nor to buy books in bookshops: stores\nand bookshops (alas) will disappear and everything will be done from home. Life\nwill become \u201chearthed\u201d or \u201chomeized\u201d (we already need to start thinking up\nneologisms). Schools too will disappear: with the use of devices like Skype,\nstudents will be able to attend their teachers\u2019 lessons from home. This\ngeneralized seclusion caused by the epidemic (or rather, by attempts to prevent\nit) will become our habitual way of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1]<\/strong><\/a> The\nfigure has increased to 3652. Until now there are 107,000 ascertained cases and\n61,000 recoveries (8 March 2020)[editors\u2019 update]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/strong><\/a> The\nnumber of fatalities in Italy has risen to 250 (8 March 2020) [editors\u2019 update]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/strong><\/a> A\nresolution made obsolete by the government ordinance effectively sealing off\npart of Northern Italy (8 March 2020). [editors\u2019 update]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 ____________<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

08\/03\/2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nCommunity of the Forsaken: A Response to Agamben and Nancy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Divya\nDwivedi and Shaj Mohan<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(in collaboration with the Journal \u201cAntinomie\u201d,\nhttps:\/\/antinomie.it\/)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India has for long been full of exceptional peoples, making\nmeaningless the notion of \u201cstate of exception\u201d or of \u201cextending\u201d it. Brahmins\nare exceptional for they alone can command the rituals that run the social\norder and they cannot be touched by the lower caste peoples (let alone desired)\nfor fear of ritualistic pollution. In modern times this involves separate\npublic toilets for them, in some instances. The Dalits, the lowest castes\npeoples too cannot be touched by the upper castes, let alone desired, because\nthey are considered the most \u2018polluting\u2019. As we can see, the exception of the\nBrahmin is unlike the exclusion of the Dalit. One of the Dalit castes named\n\u201cPariah\u201d was turned into a \u2018paradigm\u2019 by Arendt, which unfortunately lightened\nthe reality of their suffering. In 1896, when the bubonic plague entered\nBombay, the British colonial administration tried to combat the spread of the\ndisease using the Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897. However, caste barriers,\nincluding the demand by the upper castes to have separate hospitals and their\nrefusal to receive medical assistance from the lower caste peoples among the\nmedical personnel, added to causes of the deaths of more than ten million\npeople in India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The spread\nof coronavirus[1]<\/strong><\/a>, which has\ninfected more than 100,000 people according to official figures, reveals what\nwe wonder about ourselves today\u2014are we worth saving, and at what cost? On the\none hand there are the conspiracy theories which include \u201cbioweapons\u201d and a\nglobal project to bring down migration. On the other hand, there are\ntroublesome misunderstandings, including the belief that COVID-19 is something\npropagated through \u201ccorona beer\u201d, and the racist commentaries on the Chinese\npeople. But of an even greater concern is that, at this con-juncture of the\ndeath of god and birth of mechanical god, we have been persisting in a crisis\nabout the \u201cworth\u201d of man. It can be seen in the responses to the crises of\nclimate, technological \u2018exuberance\u2019, and coronavirus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier,\nman gained his worth through various theo-technologies<\/em>. For\nexample, one could imagine that the creator and creature were the\ndeterminations of something prior, say \u201cbeing\u201d, where the former was infinite<\/em> and\nthe latter finite<\/em>. In such a division one could think of god as\nthe infinite man<\/em> and man as the finite god<\/em>. In the\nname of the infinite man<\/em> the finite god<\/em>s gave the\nends to themselves. Today, we are entrusting the machine with the determination\nof ends, so that its domain can be called techno-theology<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is in\nthis peculiar con-juncture that one must consider Giorgio Agamben\u2019s recent\nremark that the containment measures against COVID-19 are being used as an\n\u201cexception\u201d to allow an extraordinary expansion of the governmental powers of\nimposing extraordinary restrictions on our freedoms. That is, the measures\ntaken by most states and at considerable delay, to prevent the spread of a\nvirus that can potentially kill at least one percent of the human population,\ncould implement the next level of \u201cexception\u201d. Agamben asks us to choose\nbetween \u201cthe exception\u201d and the regular while his concern is with the\nregularization of exception.[2]<\/strong><\/a> Jean-Luc\nNancy has since responded to this objection by observing that there are only\nexceptions today, that is, everything we once considered regular is\nbroken-through[3]<\/strong><\/a>. Deleuze\nin his final text would refer to that which calls to us at the end of all the\ngames of regularities and exceptions as \u201ca life<\/em>\u201d;[4]<\/strong><\/a> that\nis, one is seized by responsibility when one is confronted with an individual\nlife which is in the seizure of death. Death and responsibility go\ntogether<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then let us\nattend to the non-exceptionality of exceptions. Until the late 1800s, pregnant\nwomen admitted in hospitals tended to die in large numbers after giving birth\ndue to puerperal fever, or post-partum infections. At a certain moment, an\nAustrian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis realized that it was because the\nhands of medical workers carried pathogens from one autopsy to the next\npatient, or from one woman\u2019s womb to the next\u2019s, causing infections and death.\nThe solution proposed by Semmelweis was to wash hands after each contact.\n For this he was treated as an exception and ostracized by the medical\ncommunity. He died in a mental asylum suffering from septicemia, which resulted\npossibly from the beating of the guards. Indeed, there are unending senses of\nexceptions. In Semmelweis\u2019 case, the very technique for combating infection was\nthe exception. In Politics<\/em>, Aristotle discussed the case of the\nexceptional man, such as the one who could sing better than the chorus, who\nwould be ostracized for being a god amongst men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is\nnot one paradigm of exception. The pathway of one microbial pathology is\ndifferent from that of another. For example, the staphylococci live within\nhuman bodies without causing any difficulties, although they trigger infections\nwhen our immune system response is \u201cexcessive\u201d. At the extreme of\nnon-pathological relations, the chloroplasts in plant cells and the\nmitochondria in the cells of our bodies are ancient, well-settled cohabitations\nbetween different species. Above all, viruses and bacteria do not \u201cintend\u201d to\nkill their host, for it is not always in their \u201cinterest\u201d[5]<\/strong><\/a> to\ndestroy that through which alone they could survive. In the long term\u2014of\nmillions of years of nature\u2019s time\u2014\u201deverything learns to live with each other\u201d,\nor at least obtain equilibria with one another for long periods. This is the\nbiologist\u2019s sense of nature\u2019s temporality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent\nyears, due in part to farming practices, micro-organisms which used to live\napart came together and started exchanging genetic material, sometimes just\nfragments of DNA and RNA. When these organisms made the \u201cjump\u201d to human beings,\ndisasters sometimes began for us. Our immune systems find these new entrants\nshocking and then tend to overplay their resources by developing inflammations\nand fevers which often kill both us and<\/em> the micro-organisms.\nEtymologically \u201cvirus\u201d[6]<\/strong><\/a> is\nrelated to poison. It is poison in the sense that by the time a certain new\nvirus finds a negotiated settlement with human animals we will be long gone.\nThat is, everything can be thought in the model of the \u201cpharmakon\u201d (both poison\nand cure) if we take nature\u2019s time. However, the distinction between medicine\nand poison in most instances pertains to the time of humans, the uncanny\nanimal. What is termed \u201cbiopolitics\u201d takes a stand from the assumption of the\nnature\u2019s temporality, and thus neglects what is disaster in the view of our\ninterest in \u2013 our responsibility for \u2013 \u201ca life\u201d, that is, the lives of everyone\nin danger of dying from contracting the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here lies the\ncrux of the problem: we have been able to determine the \u201cinterests\u201d of our\nimmune systems by constituting exceptions in nature, including through the\nSemmelweis method of hand washing and vaccinations. Our kind of animal does not\nhave biological epochs at its disposal in order to perfect each intervention.\nHence, we too, like nature, make coding errors and mutations in nature,\nresponding to each and every exigency in ways we best can. As Nancy noted, man\nas this technical-exception-maker who is uncanny to himself was thought from\nvery early on by Sophocles in his ode to man. Correspondingly, unlike nature\u2019s\ntime, humans are concerned with this moment<\/em>, which must be led to\nthe next moment with the feeling that we are the forsaken<\/em>: those\nwho are cursed to ask after \u201cthe why\u201d of their being but without having the\nmeans to ask it. Or, as Nancy qualified it in a personal correspondence, \u201cforsaken\nby nothing<\/em>\u201d. The power of this \u201cforsakenness\u201d is unlike the abandonments\nconstituted by the absence of particular things with respect to each other.\nThis forsakenness demands, as we found with Deleuze, that we attend to each\nlife as precious, while knowing at the same time that in the communities of the\nforsaken we can experience the call of the forsaken individual life which we\nalone can attend to. Elsewhere, we have called the experience of this call of\nthe forsaken, and the possible emergence of its community from out of\nmetaphysics and hypophysics, \u201canastasis\u201d.[7]<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Divya\nDwivedi and Shaj Mohan (philosophers based in the subcontinent).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/strong><\/a> Coincidently,\nthe name of the virus \u2018corona\u2019 means \u2018crown\u2019, the metonymy of sovereignty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/strong><\/a> Which\nof course has been perceived as a non-choice by most governments since 2001 in\norder to securitize all social relations in the name of terrorism. The tendency\nnotable in these cases is that the securitization of the state is proportionate\nto corporatization of nearly all state functions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/strong><\/a> See Jean-Luc\nNancy, L\u2019Intrus (<\/em>Paris: Galil\u00e9e, 2000).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/strong><\/a> See\nGilles Deleuze, \u201cL\u2019immanence: une vie\u201d, in Philosophie<\/em> 47\n(1995).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/strong><\/a> It is\nridiculous to attribute an interest to a micro-organism, and the clarifications\ncould take much more space than this intervention allows. At the same time,\ntoday it is impossible to determine the \u201cinterest of man\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/strong><\/a> We\nshould note that \u201cviruses\u201d exist on the critical line between living and\nnon-living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/strong><\/a> In Shaj\nMohan and Divya Dwivedi, Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological\nAnti-Politics<\/em>, foreword by Jean-Luc Nancy (London: Bloomsbury Academic,\n2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

14\/03\/2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The virtues\nof the virus<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rocco\nRonchi<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is\ndifficult to resist the temptation of analogy when trying to make sense of the\nproportions of the pandemic event.  In the reflections that accompany its\nuncontrolled spread, Covid 19 has become a sort of generalized metaphor, almost\nthe symbolic precipitate of the human condition in post-modernity.  What\nhappened forty years ago, with HIV, is repeating itself today.  The\npandemic appears as a sort of experimentum crucis<\/em>, able to test\nhypotheses that go from politics to the effects of globalization, to the\ntransformation of communication at the time of the internet \u2013 reaching the heights\nof the finest metaphysical speculation.  The isolation, the mistrust and\nsuspicion the virus causes, make it alternatively \u201cpopulist\u201d and\n\u201csovereignist\u201d.  The emergency measures it forces upon us seem to\nuniversalize the \u201cstate of exception\u201d that the present has inherited from the\npolitical theology of the twentieth century, confirming Foucault\u2019s thesis that\nmodern sovereign power is biopolitical (a power that is articulated in the\nproduction, management and administration of \u201clife\u201d).  Also, because of\nthe fundamental anonymity characterizing it, the virus seems to share the same\nimmaterial quality that grounds the dominion of financial capitalism. \nBecause of how contagious it is, it can be easily compared to the prereflexive\nand \u201cviral\u201d nature of online communication.  Last but not least, the virus\nsignals our eternal human condition.  In case we have forgotten that we\nare mortal, finite, contingent, lacking, ontological wanting, etc., the virus\nis here to remind us, forcing us to meditate and correct our distraction, that\nof compulsive consumers.  These considerations are legitimate.  They\nare, in fact, perfectly justified.  This is, however, also their\ndefect.  If they make sense, it is precisely because they reduce what is\nunknown to what is known.  They use the virus as intuitive proof that\nresponds \u2013 to speak in phenomenological terms \u2013 to an expectation that is\ntheoretical.  For the critical insight that is being developed around the\nvirus, Covid 19 is rather the name of a science fiction film used to certify\nprevious knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, if\nit is true that the virus displays the characteristic of an event (it would be\ndifficult to deny this), then it must also possess its \u201cvirtue\u201d.  Events\nare such not because they \u201chappen\u201d or, at least, not only because of\nthis.  Events are not \u201cfacts\u201d.  Unlike simple facts, events possess a\n\u201cvirtue\u201d, a force, a property, a vis<\/em>, that is, they do\nsomething.  For this reason, an event is always traumatic to the point we\nmay say that if there is no trauma there is no event, that if there is no\ntrauma, literally nothing has happened.  What exactly do events do? Events\nproduce transformations that prior to their taking place were not even\npossible.  In fact, they only begin to be \u201cafter\u201d the event has taken\nplace.  In short, an event is such because it generates \u201creal\u201d\npossibility.  One must bear in mind that here \u201cpossible\u201d merely means\ndoable.  Possibility means being able to do something.  Possibility\nis nothing abstract, it is not the free imagination of other worlds that are\nbetter than this one.  Remaining on a pragmatic level, without indulging\nin metaphysics, possibility is only \u201cpotency\u201d and potency is nothing more than\naction, determined activity.  The \u201cvirtue\u201d of an event thus consists in\nrendering operational methods possible, methods that \u201cbefore\u201d were simply\nimpossible, unthinkable.  It follows that an event can only be thought of\nstarting from the future it generates (and not from the past), because it\ntransforms, because it creates that which is real, and with it\npossibility.  Common sense is therefore right when an event is thought of\nas an \u201copportunity\u201d to \u201cmake a virtue of necessity\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nWe are too close to the Covid 19 event to be able to catch a glimpse of the\nfuture it bears, our fear is human, and this makes us unreliable\nwitnesses.  However, some signs of the shift in paradigm that this virus\nis generating are already visible, and they display an unexpected sense. \nThe most striking is probably the sudden disappearance of the ideology linked\nto \u201cwalls\u201d.  The virus has come at a time when the planet seemed to\nconverge towards the shared belief that the only response to the \u201cthreats\u201d\nposed by globalization consists in redefining guarded borders and strong\nidentities.  Populism hates books, but it dogmatically believes in the\nprimacy of \u201cculture\u201d, understood in an anthropological sense.  The kind of\ncommunity it promotes is, in fact, historical, romantic and traditional. \nThis community is local by definition, its sworn enemy is the frigid abstraction\nof cosmopolitanism.  What is even more alien in the eyes of populism is\nnature, which is nothing other than a resource to be exploited for the\nwell-being of the community (one need only think of Bolsonaro and the\ndeforestation in the Amazon, of Trump and his indifference to global warming,\nof Salvini\u2019s hatred for Greta\u2026).  Populists never doubt the idea that\nhumanity is \u201cexceptional\u201d.  On the contrary, it is an article of\nfaith.  I might add that if a populist kisses the cross, it is because this\nact theologically confirms this exception.  In a matter of days, and with\nan incredible speed, the virus has forced us all, willingly or not, to take\nupon ourselves \u2013 with everyday actions (wash your hands\u2026) \u2013 the destiny of the\nglobal community, and, what is more, the destiny of the community of man with\nnature.  Our culturalist and anthropocentric prejudice was not overcome by\nthe slow and almost always ineffective action of education: a cough was enough\nto make it suddenly impossible to evade the responsibility that each individual\nhas towards all living beings for the simple fact of (still\u2026) being part of\nthis world, and of wanting to be part of it\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the objective force of trauma, the virus shows that the whole\nis always implied in the part, that \u201ceverything is, in certain sense, in\neverything\u201d and that in nature there are no autonomous regions that constitute\nan exception.  In nature there is no \u201cdominion within another\u201d, as Spinoza\nwrote, ridiculing the \u201cspirit\u2019s\u201d claims to superiority over \u201cmatter\u201d.  The\nvirus\u2019s monism is wild and its immanence cruel.  If culture\nde-solidarizes, if it erects barriers and constructs genres, if it defines\ngradations in the participation in the notion of humanity, tracing horrible\nborders between \u201cus\u201d and the \u201cbarbarians\u201d, the virus connects, and forces us to\nsearch for common solutions.  Nobody, at a time like this, can think it is\npossible to save oneself on one\u2019s own, nor is it possible to do this without\ninvolving nature in this process.  It is said that the epidemic is leading\nto the creation of red zones, domestic seclusion, the militarization of\nterritories.  This is indeed the case.  Here, however, the wall has a\ncompletely different meaning compared to the walls the rich build to keep out\nthe poor.  A wall is being erected for the other, whoever she or he may\nbe.  In times like these \u201cthy neighbour\u201d is radically reduced to the\ndimension of \u201canyone\u201d.  A wall, in all its forms, including the one metre\nseparating the people standing in bars, is erected to substitute handshakes, now\nimpossible, with that \u201canyone\u201d.  It is a means to communicate, not the\nsign of exclusion.  This is confirmed by the fact that the fascist\nrhetoric has not been able to appropriate these walls and use them to say how\nright they were about their proposals for segregation.  In the face of the\nimmense power of this virus, the fascists have had to put away, at least\nmomentarily, their most effective weapon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are too\nclose to the event also to be able to evaluate the effects it will have on the\npolitical sphere.  There is one fact, however, that must be noted. \nThe virus seems to restore the primacy that once belonged to the\npolitical.  Classical thought used a metaphor to convey this primacy, the\nimage of a ship\u2019s pilot navigating through stormy seas.  Thinkers of the\npast were realists, they knew that there were no safe harbours to enter and end\none\u2019s journey.  Navigation, they said, is necessary, life is not. \nThe \u201celement\u201d washing the political is a kind of nature in which fortune,\nchance and risk play an ineradicable role.  Political \u201cvirtue\u201d, in fact,\nconsisted in testing the force of this element, governing it with cunning\nintelligence (metis<\/em>) and resilience.  The political is such\nprecisely because it renounces the \u201chuman, all too human\u201d illusion that it is\npossible to appropriate the force of natural elements, an illusion which, on\nthe contrary, constitutes the metaphysical dream of \u201cmodern\u201d humanity, which\nhas conceived of the relationship with nature as a war of the spirit against\nbrute matter.  Political primacy means governing nature, not dominating\nit.  Also, to explicit the fully \u201cpolitical\u201d nature of this government, it\nis important to recall the formula so dear to Plato: kata dynamin<\/em>,\nas much as it is possible for a human.  Undoubtedly it is precisely the\nhypothesis of dominion that is ridiculed by a cough in Wuhan, a cough that\nmakes it necessary to apply the pragmatic intelligence of a ship\u2019s pilot to\ngovern, as much as possible, the spontaneity of a process unfolding against our\nintentions.  Covid 19 also possesses this virtue: it commands politics to\ntake on its specific responsibility, it returns the primacy that politics had\ndelusionally left to other sovereign spheres, becoming subordinate to them,\ndeclaring its own powerlessness and limiting itself to playing an exclusively\ntechnical role.  Following Wuhan the agenda can only be set by politics,\nwhich must navigate through the stormy seas of a progressive and apparently\nunstoppable contagion (indeed the Greeks described political virtue as being\n\u201ccybernetic\u201d, that is, nautical).  Indeed what until a few weeks ago\nseemed to be an unrealistic claim has now become a watchword.  Politics\nmust have precedence over the economy.  It is the latter that must yield\nto the needs of the Prince who cares about the destiny of his crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the virus invites us to meditate.  I do not think,\nhowever, that the object of this meditation is the contingency of being and the\nprecarious nature of human affairs.  We certainly do not need Covid 19 to\nreflect on our fragility.  This anxiety has never really disappeared\n(despite what the journalist in their studios keep saying, when they\npontificate about how thanks to the virus humanity, made stupid by the media,\nso by them, has finally \u201crediscovered\u201d its ontological insecurity).  The\nvirus rather articulates existence, ours and that of others, as\n\u201cdestiny\u201d.  Suddenly we feel we are being dragged by something that is\noverpowering, which grows in the silence of our organs, ignoring our\nwill.  Is freedom compromised to such an extent? This idea of freedom is\ncertainly mediocre if it conflicts with the inevitability of what takes\nplace.  Among the virtues of the virus, we must also mention its ability\nto generate a more sober idea of freedom: the freedom achieved in doing\nsomething about what destiny does to us.  To be free is to do what must be\ndone in a specific situation.  This is not philosophical\nabstraction.  We see it embodies in the efforts that people make, the\nearnestness and dedication with which thousands of people work daily to slow\nthe spread of the infection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agamben\u2019s response:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Giorgio\nAgamben: \u201cClarifications\u201d<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

TUESDAY,\nMARCH 17, 2020<\/a> ~ ADAM KOTSKO<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translator\u2019s Note: Giorgio Agamben asked me to translate this\nbrief essay, which serves as an indirect response to the controversy\nsurrounding his article about the response to coronavirus in Italy (see <\/em>here<\/em><\/a> for the original Italian piece and <\/em>here<\/em><\/a> for an English translation).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fear is a\npoor advisor, but it causes many things to appear that one pretended not to\nsee. The problem is not to give opinions on the gravity of the disease, but to\nask about the ethical and political consequences of the epidemic. The first thing\nthat the wave of panic that has paralyzed the country obviously shows is that\nour society no longer believes in anything but bare life. It is obvious that\nItalians are disposed to sacrifice practically everything \u2014 the normal\nconditions of life, social relationships, work, even friendships, affections,\nand religious and political convictions \u2014 to the danger of getting sick. Bare\nlife \u2014 and the danger of losing it \u2014 is not something that unites people, but\nblinds and separates them. Other human beings, as in the plague described in\nAlessandro Manzoni\u2019s novel, are now seen solely as possible spreaders of the\nplague whom one must avoid at all costs and from whom one needs to keep oneself\nat a distance of at least a meter. The dead \u2014 our dead \u2014 do not have a right to\na funeral and it is not clear what will happen to the bodies of our loved ones.\nOur neighbor has been cancelled and it is curious that churches remain silent\non the subject. What do human relationships become in a country that habituates\nitself to live in this way for who knows how long? And what is a society that\nhas no value other than survival?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other\nthing, no less disquieting than the first, that the epidemic has caused to\nappear with clarity is that the state of exception, to which governments have\nhabituated us for some time, has truly become the normal condition. There have\nbeen more serious epidemics in the past, but no one ever thought for that\nreason to declare a state of emergency like the current one, which prevents us\neven from moving. People have been so habituated to live in conditions of\nperennial crisis and perennial emergency that they don\u2019t seem to notice that\ntheir life has been reduced to a purely biological condition and has not only\nevery social and political dimension, but also human and affective. A society\nthat lives in a perennial state of emergency cannot be a free society. We in\nfact live in a society that has sacrificed freedom to so-called \u201creasons of\nsecurity\u201d and has therefore condemned itself to live in a perennial state of\nfear and insecurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not\nsurprising that for the virus one speaks of war. The emergency measures\nobligate us in fact to life in conditions of curfew. But a war with an\ninvisible enemy that can lurk in every other person is the most absurd of wars.\nIt is, in reality, a civil war. The enemy is not outside, it is within us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is\nworrisome is not so much or not only the present, but what comes after. Just as\nwars have left as a legacy to peace a series of inauspicious technologies, from\nbarbed wire to nuclear power plants, so it is also very likely that one will\nseek to continue even after the health emergency experiments that governments\ndid not manage to bring to reality before: closing universities and schools and\ndoing lessons only online, putting a stop once and for all to meeting together\nand speaking for political or cultural reasons and exchanging only digital\nmessages with each other, wherever possible substituting machines for every\ncontact \u2014 every contagion \u2014 between human beings.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slavoj \u017di<\/strong>\u017d<\/strong>ek responds to the whole debate (before\nAgamben will have made his \u2018clarifications\u2019):<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

MONITOR AND PUNISH? YES,\nPLEASE!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n \n BY SLAVOJ\n\u017dI\u017dEK<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

16<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MAR
\n2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many liberal and Leftist commentators\nhave noted how the coronavirus epidemic serves to justify and legitimize\nmeasures of control and regulation of the people that had been till now\nunthinkable in a Western democratic society. Is the total lockdown of Italy not\na totalitarian\u2019s wet dream come true? No wonder that (at least the way it looks\nnow) China, which had already widely practiced modes of digitalized social\ncontrol, proved to be best equipped for coping with catastrophic epidemics.\nDoes this mean that, at least in some aspects, China is our future? Are we\napproaching a global state of exception? Have Giorgio Agamben\u2019s analyses gained\nnew actuality?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not surprising that Agamben himself drew this conclusion<\/a>: he reacted to the coronavirus epidemic in a\nradically different way from the majority of commentators. He deplored the\n\u201cfrantic, irrational, and absolutely unwarranted emergency measures adopted for\na supposed epidemic of coronavirus\u201d which is just another version of flu, and\nasked: \u201cWhy do the media and the authorities do their utmost to create a climate\nof panic, thus provoking a true state of exception, with severe limitations on\nmovement and the suspension of daily life and work activities for entire\nregions?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agamben sees the main reason for this\n\u201cdisproportionate response\u201d in \u201cthe growing tendency to use the state of\nexception as a normal governing paradigm.\u201d The imposed measures allow the\ngovernment to seriously limit our freedoms by executive decree: \u201c<\/strong>It\nis blatantly evident that these restrictions are disproportionate to the threat\nfrom what is, according to the NRC, a normal flu, not much different from those\nthat affect us every year. \/\u2026\/ We might say that once terrorism was exhausted\nas a justification for exceptional measures, the invention of an epidemic could\noffer the ideal pretext for broadening such measures beyond any limitation.\u201d\nThe second reason is \u201cthe state of fear, which in recent years has diffused\ninto individual consciousnesses and which translates into a real need\nfor states of collective panic,for which the epidemic once again offers\nthe ideal pretext.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agamben is describing an important\naspect of the functioning of state control in ongoing epidemics. But there are\nquestions that remain open: why would state power be interested in promoting\nsuch a panic, which is accompanied by distrust in state power (\u201cthey are\nhelpless, they are not doing enough\u2026\u201d) and which disturbs the smooth\nreproduction of capital? Is it really in the interest of capital and state\npower to trigger a global economic crisis in order to reinvigorate their reign?\nAre the clear signs that not just ordinary people, but also state power itself\nis in panic, fully aware of not being able to control the situation \u2013 are these\nsigns really just a stratagem?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agamben\u2019s reaction is the extreme\nform of a widespread Leftist stance of reading the \u201cexaggerated panic\u201d caused\nby the spread of the virus as a mixture of power exercise of social control and\nelements of outright racism (\u201cblame nature or China\u201d). However, such a social\ninterpretation doesn\u2019t make the reality of the threat disappear. Does this\nreality compel us to effectively curtail our freedoms? Quarantines and similar\nmeasures, of course, limit our freedom, and new Assanges are needed here to\nbring out their possible misuses. But the threat of viral infection also gave a\ntremendous boost to new forms of local and global solidarity, plus it made\nclear the need for control over power itself. People are right to hold state\npower responsible: you have the power, now show what you can do! The challenge\nthat Europe faces is to prove that what China did can be done in a more\ntransparent and democratic way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChina introduced measures that\nWestern Europe and the USA are unlikely to tolerate, perhaps to their own\ndetriment. Put bluntly, it is a mistake to reflexively interpret all forms of\nsensing and modelling as \u2018surveillance\u2019 and active governance as \u2018social\ncontrol\u2019. We need a different and more nuanced vocabulary of intervention.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything hinges on this \u201cmore\nnuanced vocabulary\u201d: the measures necessitated by an epidemic should not be\nautomatically reduced to the usual paradigm of surveillance and control propagated\nby thinkers like Foucault. What I fear today more than the measures applied by\nChina (and Italy and\u2026) is that they apply these measures in a way that will not\nwork to contain the epidemic, while authorities will manipulate and conceal the\ntrue data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both alt-right and fake Left refuse\nto accept the full reality of the epidemic, each watering it down in an\nexercise of social-constructivist reduction, i.e., denouncing it on behalf of\nits social meaning. Trump and his partisans repeatedly insist that the epidemic\nis a plot by Democrats and China to make him lose the upcoming elections, while\nsome on the Left denounce the measures proposed by the state and health\napparatuses as tainted by xenophobia and, therefore, insist on shaking hands,\netc. Such a stance misses the paradox: not to shake hands and to go into\nisolation when needed IS today\u2019s form of solidarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who, today, will be able to afford\nshaking hands and embracing? The privileged. Boccaccio\u2019s Decameron<\/em> is\ncomposed of stories told by a group of seven young women and three young men\nsheltering in a secluded villa just outside Florence<\/a> to\nescape the plague which afflicted the city. The financial elite will withdraw\ninto secluded zones and amuse themselves there telling stories in the Decameron<\/em> style.\n(The ultra-rich are already flocking with private planes to exclusive small\nislands in the Caribbean.) We, ordinary people, who will have to live with\nviruses, are bombarded by the endlessly repeated formula \u201cNo panic!\u201d\u2026 and then\nwe get all the data that cannot but trigger a panic. The situation resembles\nthe one I remember from my youth in a Communist country: when government\nofficials assured the public that there was no reason to panic, we all took\nthese assurances as clear signs that they were themselves in a panic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But panic is not a proper way to\nconfront a real threat. When we react in a panic, we do not take the threat too\nseriously; we, on the contrary, trivialize it. Just think of how ridiculous the\nexcessive buying of toilet paper rolls is: as if having enough toilet paper\nwould matter in the midst of a deadly epidemic\u2026 So, what would be an\nappropriate reaction to the coronavirus epidemic? What should we learn and what\nshould we do to confront it seriously?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I suggested that the coronavirus\nepidemic may give a new boost of life to Communism, my claim was, as expected,\nridiculed. Although it looks that a strong approach to the crisis by the\nChinese state worked \u2013 at least it worked much better than what is going on now\nin Italy -, the old authoritarian logic of Communists in power also clearly\ndemonstrated its limitations. One of them was that the fear of bringing bad\nnews to those in power (and to the public) outweighs actual results. This was\nthe reason why those who first reported on a new virus were arrested, and there are reports<\/a> that a similar thing is going on now:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe pressure to get China back to\nwork after the coronavirus shutdown is resurrecting an old temptation:\ndoctoring data so it shows senior officials what they want to see. This\nphenomenon is playing out in Zhejiang province, an industrial hub on the east\ncoast, in the form of electricity usage. At least three cities there have given\nlocal factories targets to hit for power consumption because they\u2019re using the\ndata to show a resurgence in production, according to people familiar with the\nmatter. That\u2019s prompted some businesses to run machinery even as their plants\nremain empty, the people said.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can also guess what will follow\nwhen those in power note this cheating: local managers will be accused of\nsabotage and severely punished, thus reproducing the vicious cycle of distrust\u2026\nA Chinese Julian Assange will be needed here to expose to the public this\nconcealed side of how China is coping with the epidemic. So, if this is not the\nCommunism I have in mind, what do I mean by Communism? To get it, it suffices\nto read the public declarations of WHO. Here is a recent one<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom\nGhebreyesus said Thursday that although public health authorities across the\nglobe have the ability to successfully combat the spread of the virus, the\norganization is concerned that in some countries the level of political\ncommitment does not match the threat level. \u2018This is not a drill. This is not\nthe time to give up. This is not a time for excuses. This is a time for pulling\nout all the stops. Countries have been planning for scenarios like this for\ndecades. Now is the time to act on those plans,\u2019 Tedros said. \u2018This epidemic\ncan be pushed back, but only with a collective, coordinated and comprehensive\napproach that engages the entire machinery of government.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One might add that such a\ncomprehensive approach should reach well beyond the machinery of single\ngovernments: it should encompass the local mobilization of people outside state\ncontrol as well as strong and efficient international coordination and\ncollaboration. If thousands are hospitalized for respiratory problems, a vastly\nincreased number of respiratory machines will be needed, and to get them, the\nstate should directly intervene in the same way as it intervenes in conditions\nof war when thousands of guns are needed. And it should rely on the cooperation\nwith other states. As in a military campaign, information should be shared and plans\nfully coordinated \u2013 THIS is all I mean by \u201cCommunism\u201d needed today, or, as Will Hutton put it<\/a>: \u201cNow, one form of unregulated, free-market\nglobalization with its propensity for crises and pandemics is certainly dying.\nBut another form that recognizes interdependence and the primacy of\nevidence-based collective action is being born.\u201d What now still predominates is\nthe stance of \u201cevery country for itself\u201d: \u201cthere are national bans on exports of key products<\/a> such as medical supplies, with countries\nfalling back on their own analysis of the crisis amid localised shortages and\nhaphazard, primitive approaches to containment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coronavirus epidemic does not\nsignal just the limit of market globalization, it also signals the even more\nfatal limit of nationalist populism, which insists on full state sovereignty.\nIt\u2019s over with \u201cAmerica (or whoever) first!\u201d since America can be saved only\nthrough global coordination and collaboration. I am not a utopian here; I don\u2019t\nappeal to an idealized solidarity between people. On the contrary, the present\ncrisis demonstrates clearly how global solidarity and cooperation is in the\ninterest of the survival of all and each of us, how it is the only rationally\negotistic thing to do. And it\u2019s not just coronavirus: China itself suffered a\ngigantic swine flu months ago, and it is now threatened by the prospect of a\nlocust invasion. Plus, as Owen Jones noted<\/a>, the climate crisis kills many more people around\nthe world than coronavirus, but there is no panic about this\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a cynical vitalist standpoint,\none would be tempted to see the coronavirus as a beneficial infection, which\nallows humanity to get rid of the old, weak and ill, like pulling out a\nhalf-rotten weed, and thus contributes to global health. The broad Communist\napproach I am advocating is the only way for us to really leave behind such a\nprimitive vitalist standpoint. Signs of curtailing unconditional solidarity are\nalready discernible in ongoing debates, as in the following note about the role\nof the \u201cthree wise men\u201d if the epidemic takes a more catastrophic turn in\nthe UK<\/a>: \u201cNHS patients could be denied\nlifesaving care during a severe coronavirus outbreak in Britain if intensive\ncare units are struggling to cope, senior doctors have warned. Under a\nso-called \u2018three wise men\u2019 protocol, three senior consultants in each hospital\nwould be forced to make decisions on rationing care such as ventilators and\nbeds, in the event hospitals were overwhelmed with patients.\u201d What criteria\nwill the \u201cthree wise men\u201d rely on? Sacrifice the weakest and eldest? And will\nthis situation not open up the space for immense corruption? Do such procedures\nnot indicate that we are getting ready to enact the most brutal logic of the\nsurvival of the fittest? So, again, the ultimate choice is either this or some\nkind of reinvented Communism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But things go much deeper than that.\nWhat I find especially annoying is how, when our media announce some closure or\ncancellation, they as a rule add a fixed temporal limitation: the \u201cschools will\nbe closed till April 4\u201d formula. The big expectation is that, after the peak\nwhich should arrive fast, things would return to normal. In this sense, I was\nalready informed that a university symposium is just postponed to September\u2026\nThe catch is that, even when life eventually returns to normal, it will not be\nthe same normal we were used to before the outbreak: things we were used to as\npart of our daily life will no longer be taken for granted; we\u2019ll have to learn\nto live a much more fragile life with constant threats lurking just behind the\ncorner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this reason, we can expect that\nviral epidemics will affect our most elementary interactions with other people\nand objects around, inclusive of our own bodies: avoid touching things which\nmay be (invisibly) \u201cdirty,\u201c do not touch hooks, do not seat on public toilets\nor on benches in public places, avoid embracing others and shaking their hands\u2026\nAnd even be careful about how you control your own body and your spontaneous\ngestures: do not touch your nose or rub your eyes \u2013 in short, do not play with\nyourself. So, it\u2019s not only the state and other agencies that will control us;\nwe should learn to control and discipline ourselves! Maybe, only virtual\nreality will be considered safe, and moving freely in an open space will be\nreserved for the islands owned by the ultra-rich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even here, at the level of\nvirtual reality and the internet, we should remind ourselves that, in the last\ndecades, the terms \u201cvirus\u201d and \u201cviral\u201d were mostly used to designate digital\nviruses which were infecting our web-space and of which we were not aware, at\nleast not until their destructive power (say, of destroying our data or our\nhard-drive) was unleashed. What we see now is a massive return to the original\nliteral meaning of the term: viral infections work hand in hand in both\ndimensions, real and virtual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, we\u2019ll have to change our entire\nstance toward life, toward our existence as living beings among other forms of\nlife. In other words, if we understand \u201cphilosophy\u201d as the name for our basic\norientation in life, we\u2019ll have to experience a true philosophical revolution.\nMaybe we can learn something about our reactions to the coronavirus epidemic\nfrom Elisabeth K\u00fcbler-Ross who, in her On Death and Dying<\/em>, proposed\nthe famous scheme of the five stages of how we react upon learning that we have\na terminal illness: denial<\/em> (one simply refuses to accept the\nfact: \u201cThis can\u2019t be happening, not to me.\u201d); anger<\/em> (which\nexplodes when we can no longer deny the fact: \u201cHow can this happen to\nme?\u201d); b<\/em>argaining<\/em><\/a> (the hope we can somehow postpone or diminish\nthe fact: \u201cJust let me live to see my children graduate.\u201d); depression<\/em> (libidinal\ndisinvestment: \u201cI\u2019m going to die, so why bother with anything?\u201d); acceptance<\/em> (\u201cI\ncan\u2019t fight it, I may as well prepare for it.\u201d). Later, K\u00fcbler-Ross applied\nthese stages to any form of catastrophic personal loss (joblessness, death of a\nloved one, divorce<\/a>, drug addiction<\/a>), and also emphasized that they do not necessarily\ncome in the same order, nor are all five stages experienced by all patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One can discern the same five stages\nwhenever a society is confronted with some traumatic break. Let\u2019s take the\nthreat of ecological catastrophe: first, we tend to deny it (it\u2019s just\nparanoia, what happens are the usual oscillations in weather patterns); then\ncomes anger (at big corporations which pollute our environment, at the\ngovernment which ignores the dangers) followed by bargaining (if we recycle our\nwaste, we can buy some time; plus, there are good sides to it also: we can grow\nvegetables of Greenland, ships will be able to transport goods from China to\nthe US much faster on the northern route, new fertile land is becoming\navailable in northern Siberia due to the melting of permafrost\u2026), depression\n(it\u2019s too late, we\u2019re doomed\u2026), and, finally, acceptance: we are dealing with a\nserious threat and we\u2019ll have to change our entire way of life!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same holds for the growing threat\nof digital control over our lives: first, we tend to deny it (it\u2019s an\nexaggeration, a Leftist paranoia, no agency can control our daily activity\u2026),\nthen we explode in anger (at big companies and secret state agencies who know\nus better than we know ourselves and use this knowledge to control and\nmanipulate us), which is followed by bargaining (authorities have the right to\nsearch for terrorists, but not to infringe upon our privacy\u2026), depression (it\u2019s\ntoo late, our privacy is lost, the time of personal freedoms is over), and,\nfinally, acceptance: digital control is a threat to our freedom; we should make\nthe public aware of all its dimensions and engage in fighting it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in the domain of politics, the\nsame holds for those who are traumatized by Trump\u2019s presidency: first, there\nwas denial (don\u2019t worry, Trump is just posturing, nothing will really change if\nhe takes power), followed by anger (at the dark forces which enabled him to\ntake power, at the populists who support him and pose a threat to our moral\nsubstance\u2026), bargaining (all is not yet lost, maybe Trump can be contained,\nlet\u2019s just tolerate some of his excesses\u2026), depression (we are on the path to\nFascism, democracy is lost in the US), and acceptance: there is a new political\nregime in the US, the good old days of American democracy are over, let\u2019s face\nthe danger and calmly plan how we can overcome Trump\u2019s populism\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In medieval times, the population of\nan affected town reacted to the signs of the plague in a similar way: first\ndenial, then anger (at our sinful lives for which we are punished, or even at\nthe cruel God who allowed it), then bargaining (it\u2019s not so bad, let\u2019s just\navoid those who are ill\u2026), then depression (our life is over\u2026), then,\ninterestingly, orgies (since our lives are over, let\u2019s get out of it all the\npleasures still possible \u2013 drinking, sex\u2026), and, finally, acceptance: here we\nare, let\u2019s just behave as much as possible as if normal life goes on\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And is this not also how we are\ndealing with the coronavirus epidemic that exploded at the end of 2019? First,\nthere was a denial (nothing serious is going on, some irresponsible individuals\nare just spreading panic); then, anger (usually in a racist or anti-state form:\nthe dirty Chinese are guilty, our state is not efficient\u2026); next comes\nbargaining (OK, there are some victims, but it\u2019s less serious than SARS, and we\ncan limit the damage\u2026); if this doesn\u2019t work, depression arises (let\u2019s not kid\nourselves, we are all doomed). But what would acceptance look like here? It is\na strange fact that the epidemic displays a feature common with the latest\nround of social protests (in France, in Hong Kong\u2026): they don\u2019t explode and\nthen pass away; rather, they stay here and just persist, bringing permanent\nfear and fragility to our lives. But this acceptance can take two directions.\nIt can mean just the re-normalization of illness: OK, people will be dying, but\nlife will go on, maybe there will be even some good side effects\u2026 Or acceptance\ncan (and should) propel us to mobilize ourselves without panic and illusions,\nto act in collective solidarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we should accept, what we should\nreconcile ourselves with, is that there is a sub-layer of life, the undead,\nstupidly repetitive, pre-sexual life of viruses, which always was here and\nwhich will always be with us as a dark shadow, posing a threat to our very\nsurvival, exploding when we least expect it. And at an even more general level,\nviral epidemics remind us of the ultimate contingency and meaninglessness of\nour lives: no matter how magnificent spiritual edifices we, humanity, bring\nout, a stupid natural contingency like a virus or an asteroid can end it all\u2026\nNot to mention the lesson of ecology which is that we, humanity, may also\nunknowingly contribute to this end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make this point clearer, let me\nshamelessly quote a\npopular definition<\/a>: viruses are \u201cany\nof various infectious agents, usually ultramicroscopic, that consist of nucleic\nacid, either RNA or DNA, within a case of protein: they infect animals, plants,\nand bacteria and reproduce only within living cells: viruses are considered as\nbeing non-living chemical units or sometimes as living organisms.\u201d This\noscillation between life and death is crucial: viruses are neither alive nor\ndead in the usual sense of these terms. They are the living dead: a virus is\nalive due to its drive to replicate, but it is a kind of zero-level life, a\nbiological caricature not so much of death-drive as of life at its most stupid\nlevel of repetition and multiplication. However, viruses are not an elementary\nform of life out of which more complex forms developed. They are purely parasitic;\nthey replicate themselves through infecting more developed organisms (when a\nvirus infects us, humans, we simply serve as its copying machine). It is in\nthis coincidence of the opposites \u2013 elementary and parasitic \u2013 that resides the\nmystery of viruses: they are a case of what Schelling called \u201cder nie\naufhebbare Rest,<\/em>\u201d a remainder of the lowest form of life that emerges as a\nproduct of malfunctioning of higher mechanisms of multiplication and continues\nto haunt (infect) them, a remainder which cannot ever be re-integrated as the\nsubordinate moment of a higher level of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here we encounter what Hegel calls\n\u201cspeculative judgment,\u201d an assertion of the identity of the highest and the\nlowest. Hegel\u2019s best-known example is \u201cSpirit is a bone\u201d from his analysis of\nphrenology in Phenomenology of Spirit<\/em>, and our example should be\n\u201cSpirit is a virus.\u201d Is human spirit also not some kind of virus that\nparasitizes of the human animal, exploits it for its own self-reproduction, and\nsometimes threatening to destroy it? And, insofar as the medium of spirit is\nlanguage, we should not forget that, at its most elementary level, language is\nalso something mechanic, a matter of rules we have to learn and follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard Dawkins claimed that memes\nare \u201cviruses of the mind,\u201d parasitic entities which \u201ccolonize\u201d the human mind,\nusing it as a means to multiply themselves. It is an idea whose originator was\nnone other than Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy is usually perceived as a much less\ninteresting author than Dostoyevsky \u2013 a hopelessly outdated realist for whom\nthere is basically no place in modernity, in contrast to Dostoyevsky\u2019s\nexistential anguish. Perhaps, however, the time has come to fully rehabilitate\nTolstoy, his unique theory of art and humanity in general, in which we find\nechoes of Dawkins\u2019s notion of memes. \u201cA person is a hominid with an infected\nbrain, host to millions of cultural symbionts, and the chief enablers of these\nare the symbiont systems known as languages\u201d[2]<\/a> \u2013\nis this passage from Dennett not pure Tolstoy? The basic category of Tolstoy\u2019s\nanthropology is infection<\/em>: a human subject is a passive empty\nmedium infected by affect-laden cultural elements that, like contagious\nbacilli, spread from one individual to another. And Tolstoy goes here to the\nend: he does not oppose to this spread of affective infections a true spiritual\nautonomy; he does not propose a heroic vision of educating oneself to be a\nmature autonomous ethical subject by way of getting rid of infectious bacilli.\nThe only struggle is the struggle between good and bad infections: Christianity\nitself is an infection, if \u2013 for Tolstoy \u2013 a good one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe, this is the most disturbing\nthing we can learn from the ongoing viral epidemic: when nature is attacking us\nwith viruses, it is in a way sending our own message back to us. The message\nis: what you did to me, I am now doing to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> Benjamin Bratton, personal communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves<\/em>,\nLondon: penguin Books 2004, p. 173.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Lacanian psycho-analytic\nviewpoint on the virus, one among several:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/www.thelacanianreviews.com\/a-world-in-quarantine\/?fbclid=IwAR2wh9sHtwv_hcXgeqO3xC7H_r2zBMfGoaNTYUzwtiYA0Ho99UKlHzswUTc<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A World in Quarantine?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n