<nettime> Agamben on Coronavirus (2 texts)

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

http://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/coronavirus-and-philosophers

Giorgio Agamben: "The Invention of an Epidemic"

(Published in Italian on Quodlibet,
https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-l-invenzione-di-un-epidemia,
26/02/2020)

Faced with the frenetic, irrational and entirely unfounded emergency
measures adopted against an alleged epidemic of coronavirus, we should
begin from the declaration issued by the National Research Council
(CNR), which states not only that "there is no SARS-CoV2 epidemic in
Italy", but also that "the infection, according to the epidemiologic
data available as of today and based on tens of thousands of cases,
causes mild/moderate symptoms (a sort of influenza) in 80-90% of
cases. In 10-15% of cases a pneumonia may develop, but one with a
benign outcome in the large majority of cases. It has been estimated
that only 4% of patients require intensive therapy".

If this is the real situation, why do the media and the authorities do
their utmost to spread a state of panic, thus provoking an authentic
state of exception with serious limitations on movement and a
suspension of daily life in entire regions?

Two factors can help explain such a disproportionate response.
First and foremost, what is once again manifest is the tendency
to use a state of exception as a normal paradigm for government.
The legislative decree immediately approved by the government "for
hygiene and public safety reasons" actually produces an authentic
militarization "of the municipalities and areas with the presence
of at least one person who tests positive and for whom the source
of transmission is unknown, or in which there is at least one case
that is not ascribable to a person who recently returned from an
area already affected by the virus". Such a vague and undetermined
definition will make it possible to rapidly extend the state of
exception to all regions, as it’s almost impossible that
other s= uch cases will not appear elsewhere. Let’s consider
the serious limitat= ions of freedom the decree contains: a) a
prohibition against any individuals leaving the affected municipality
or area; b) a prohibition against anyone from outside accessing
the affected municipality or area; c) the suspension of events or
initiatives of any nature and of any form of gatherings in public
or private places, including those of a cultural, recreational,
sporting and religious nature, including enclosed spaces if they
are open to the public; d) the closure of kindergartens, childcare
services and schools of all levels, as well as the attendance of
school, higher education activities and professional courses, except
for distance learning; e) the closure to the public of museums and
other cultural institutions and spaces as listed in article 101 of
the code of cultural and landscape heritage, pursuant to Legislative
Decree 22 January 2004, no. 42. All regulations on free access to
those institutions and spaces are also suspended; f) suspension of
all educational trips both in Italy and abroad; g) suspension of all
public examination procedures and all activities of public offices,
without prejudice to the provision of essential and public utility
services; h) the enforcement of quarantine measures and active
surveillance of individuals who have had close contacts with confirmed
cases of infection.

The disproportionate reaction to what according to the CNR is
something not too different from the normal flus that affect us every
year is quite blatant. It is almost as if with terrorism exhausted as
a cause for exceptional measures, the invention of an epidemic offered
the ideal pretext for scaling them up beyond any limitation.

The other no less disturbing factor is the state of fear that in
recent years has evidently spread among individual consciences and
that translates into an authentic need for situations of collective
panic for which the epidemic provides once again the ideal pretext.
Therefore, in a perverse vicious circle, the limitations of freedom
imposed by governments are accepted in the name of a desire for safety
that was created by the same governments that are now intervening to
satisfy it.

****

https://itself.blog/2020/03/17/giorgio-agamben-clarifications

Giorgio Agamben: "Clarifications"
Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Translator’s Note: Giorgio Agamben asked me to translate this
brief= essay, which serves as an indirect response to the controversy
surrounding his article about the response to coronavirus in Italy. -
Adam Kotsko

Fear is a poor advisor, but it causes many things to appear that one
pretended not to see. The problem is not to give opinions on the
gravity of the disease, but to ask about the ethical and political
consequences of the epidemic. The first thing that the wave of panic
that has paralyzed the country obviously shows is that our society
no longer believes in anything but bare life. It is obvious that
Italians are disposed to sacrifice practically everything - the normal
conditions of life, social relationships, work, even friendships,
affections, and religious and political convictions - to the danger of
getting sick.

Bare life - and the danger of losing it - is not something that unites
people, but blinds and separates them. Other human beings, as in the
plague described in Alessandro Manzoni’s novel, are now seen
solely as pos= sible spreaders of the plague whom one must avoid at
all costs and from whom one needs to keep oneself at a distance of at
least a meter. The dead - our dead - do not have a right to a funeral
and it is not clear what will happen to the bodies of our loved ones.
Our neighbor has been cancelled and it is curious that churches remain
silent on the subject. What do human relationships become in a country
that habituates itself to live in this way for who knows how long? And
what is a society that has no value other than survival?

The other thing, no less disquieting than the first, that the epidemic
has caused to appear with clarity is that the state of exception, to
which governments have habituated us for some time, has truly become
the normal condition. There have been more serious epidemics in the
past, but no one ever thought for that reason to declare a state of
emergency like the current one, which prevents us even from moving.
People have been so habituated to live in conditions of perennial
crisis and perennial emergency that they don’t seem to notice
that their life has been r= educed to a purely biological condition
and has not only every social and political dimension, but also
human and affective. A society that lives in a perennial state of
emergency cannot be a free society. We in fact live in a society that
has sacrificed freedom to so-called "reasons of security" and has
therefore condemned itself to live in a perennial state of fear and
insecurity.

It is not surprising that for the virus one speaks of war. The
emergency measures obligate us in fact to life in conditions of
curfew. But a war with an invisible enemy that can lurk in every other
person is the most absurd of wars. It is, in reality, a civil war. The
enemy is not outside, it is within us.

What is worrisome is not so much or not only the present, but what
comes after. Just as wars have left as a legacy to peace a series of
inauspicious technology, from barbed wire to nuclear power plants, so
it is also very likely that one will seek to continue even after the
health emergency experiments that governments did not manage to bring
to reality before: closing universities and schools and doing lessons
only online, putting a stop once and for all to meeting together and
speaking for political or cultural reasons and exchanging only digital
messages with each other, wherever possible substituting machines for
every contact - every contagion - between human beings.




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