NICOLAS TRUONGGiorgio Agamben: “The epidemic clearly shows that the state of exception has become the normal condition”

Nicolas Truong, Le Monde, 24/3/2020
Translated by Lena Bloch

In an interview with "Le Monde", the Italian philosopher criticizes the implementation of extraordinary security measures assuming that life must be suspended to protect it.

 

YANN LEGENDRE

Internationally renowned Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben has notably elaborated the concept of "state of exception" as a paradigm of government in his great work of political philosophy Homo Sacer (Seuil, 1997-2005). In the wake of Michel Foucault, but also of Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt, he has conducted a series of archaeological investigations of the notions of "dispositif " and " command ", and has elaborated the concepts of " idleness ", " form of life " or " inactive power ". Giorgio Agamben, a leading intellectual of the " non-governable " movement, published an article in the newspaper Il Manifesto ("Coronavirus and a state of exception", February 26) which drew criticism because, based on the Italian health data of the time, it focused on the defense of public freedoms by minimizing the extent of the epidemic. In an interview with Le Monde, he analyzes "the extremely serious ethical and political consequences" of the security measures implemented to curb the pandemic.

In a text published by "Il Manifesto", you wrote that the global pandemic of Covid-19 was "a supposed epidemic", nothing more than "a kind of flu". In view of the number of victims and the rapid spread of the virus, especially in Italy, do you regret these words?

I am neither a virologist nor a doctor, and in the article in question, which dates back to a month ago, I was simply quoting verbatim what the opinion of the Italian National Research Center was then. But I am not going to enter into the discussions among scientists about the epidemic - what interests me, are the extremely serious ethical and political consequences.

It would seem that, since terrorism has been exhausted as a cause of emergency measures, the invention of an epidemic could offer the ideal pretext for extending (emergency measures) beyond all limits," you write. How can you argue that this is an "invention"? Can't terrorism, just like an epidemic, lead to security policies that are unacceptable, even though they are real?

When we speak of invention in a political field, we must not forget that this should not be understood in a solely subjective sense. Historians know that there are conspiracies that are objective, so to speak, that seem to function as such without being directed by an identifiable subject. As Michel Foucault showed before me, security governments do not necessarily function by producing the situation of exception, but by exploiting and directing it when it occurs. I am certainly not the only one to think that for a totalitarian government like China's, the epidemic was the ideal way to test the possibility of isolating and controlling a whole region. And that in Europe we can refer to China as a model to follow shows the degree of political irresponsibility into which fear has thrown us. We should ask ourselves about the strange fact that the Chinese government suddenly declares the epidemic closed when it suits them.

Why do you think the state of exception is unjustified, when containment is seen by scientists as one of the main ways to stop the spread of the virus?

Giorgio Agamben: The face and death

 Translated by LockdownCriticalLeft, 3/4/2021

It seems that in the new global order that is taking shape two things, apparently unrelated to one another, are destined to be completely removed: the face and death. We will try to investigate whether they are not somehow connected and what is the meaning of their removal.

Willey Reveley, Faceless statue of Proserpina at Eleusis, Watercolor with ink on paper, c. 1785

That the vision of one’s own face and the face of others is a decisive experience for man was already known to the ancients: “What is called the face,” writes Cicero, “cannot exist in any animal except in man.” The Greeks defined the slave, who is not master of himself, aprosopon, literally the “faceless”. Of course, all living beings show themselves and communicate to each other, but only man makes the face the place of his recognition and his truth. Man is the animal that recognizes his face in the mirror, mirrors himself, and recognizes himself in the face of the other. The face is, in this sense, both the similitas - the similarity - and the simultas - the being together of humans. A faceless human is necessarily alone.

This is why the face is the place of politics. If humans had to communicate always and only information, always this or that thing, there would never be politics properly, but only the exchange of messages. But since first of all humans have to communicate their openness to each other, their recognition of one another in a face, the face is the very condition of politics, on which is based everything that humans say and exchange.

The face is in this sense the true city of humans, the political element par excellence. It is by looking into each other’s faces that humanbs recognize and become passionate about each other, perceive similarity and diversity, distance and proximity. If there is no animal politics, this is because animals, which are always already in the open, do not make their exposure a problem, they simply dwell in it without caring about it. This is why they are not interested in mirrors, in the image as an image. Human, on the other hand, wants to recognize him·herself and be recognized. S·he wants to appropriate his·her own image: s·he seeks his own truth in it. In this way s·he transforms the animal environment into a world, in the field of an incessant political dialectic.