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 such cases will not appear elsewhere. Let’s consider the serious
limitations 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

1
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.

Giorgio Agamben
Clarifications

17/03/2020

An Italian journalist applied himself, according to the best practice of his

profession, to distorting and falsifying my considerations on the ethical
confusion into which the epidemic is throwing the country, where there is no
longer even any respect for the dead. In the same way as it’s not worth
mentioning his name, it’s not worth rectifying his predictable manipulations.
Those who wish to do so may read my text Contagion on the Quodlibet
publisher’s website. Instead, I would rather publish here some further
reflections, which, despite their clarity, will presumably be falsified too.

Fear is a bad counsellor, but it makes us see many things we pretended not to
see. The first thing the wave of panic that’s paralysed the country has clearly
shown is that our society no longer believes in anything but naked life. It is
evident that Italians are prepared to sacrifice practically everything – normal
living conditions, social relations, work, even friendships and religious or political
beliefs – to avoid the danger of falling ill. The naked life, and the fear of losing
it, is not something that brings men and women together, but something that
blinds and separates them. Other human beings, like those in the plague
described by Manzoni, are now seen only as potential contaminators to be
avoided at all costs or at least to keep at a distance of at least one metre. The
dead – our dead – have no right to a funeral and it’s not clear what happens to
the corpses of our loved ones. Our fellow humans have been erased and it’s

2
odd that the Churches remain silent on this point. What will human relations
become in a country that will be accustomed to living in this way for who knows
how long? And what is a society with no other value other than survival?

The other thing, no less disturbing than the first, is that the epidemic is clearly
showing that the state of exception, which governments began to accustom us
to years ago, has become an authentically normal condition. There have been
more serious epidemics in the past, but no one ever thought of declaring a state
of emergency like today, one that forbids us even to move. Men have become
so used to living in conditions of permanent crisis and emergency that they don’t
seem to notice that their lives have been reduced to a purely biological condition,
one that has lost not only any social and political dimension, but even any
compassionate and emotional one. A society that lives in a permanent state of
emergency cannot be a free one. We effectively live in a society that has
sacrificed freedom to so-called “security reasons” and as a consequence has
condemned itself to living in a permanent state of fear and insecurity.

It’s not surprising that we talk about the virus in terms of a war. The emergency
provisions effectively force us to live under a curfew. But a war against an
invisible enemy that can nestle in any other human being is the most absurd of
wars. It is, to be truthful, a civil war. The enemy isn’t somewhere outside, it’s
inside us.

What’s worrying in not so much the present, not only the present at least, but
the aftermath. In the same way as the legacies of wars on peacetime have
included a whole range of nefarious technologies, from barbed wire to nuclear
plants, so it is very likely that there will be attempts to carry on pursuing, even
after the medical emergency is over, many of the experiments governments
hadn’t been able to implement: may universities and schools remain shut, with
lessons and lectures taking place online, may an end be put once and for all to
meetings and gathering to talk about political and cultural questions, may we
only exchange digital messages and may wherever possible machines replace
any contact – any contagion – between human beings.

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Reflections on the Plague (Giorgio Agamben)

The reflections that follow do not deal with the epidemic itself but with what we
can learn from the reactions to it. They are, thus, reflections on the ease with
which the whole of society has united in feeling itself afflicted by a plague, has
isolated itself in its homes, and has suspended all normal conditions of life —
work relationships, friendship, love, and even religious and political beliefs. Why
were there no protests and no opposition, as was certainly possible and as is
usual in these situations? The hypothesis that I would like to suggest is that
somehow, albeit unconsciously, the plague was already present. Conditions of
life had evidently become such that a sudden sign was all that it took for the
situation to appear for what it was — intolerable, like a plague. In a certain
sense, the only positive thing that might be gained from the present situation is
this: it is possible that people will begin to ask themselves if the way in which
they had previously been living was right.

We should also reflect upon the need for religion that this situation has made
visible. This is indicated by the appearance of terminology from eschatology in
the discourse of the media: the obsessive recurrence, above all in the American
press, of the word “apocalypse” and other evocations of the end of the world. It
is as if the need for religion, no longer finding any satisfaction in the Church,
began gropingly to look for another place wherein it could consist, and found it
in what has become the religion of our time: science. This, like any religion, can
give rise to superstitions and fear — or at least can be used to spread them.
Never before have we witnessed such a spectacle of diverse, contradictory
opinions and prescriptions — typical of religion in periods of crisis — ranging
from minority heretical positions denying the seriousness of the phenomenon
(held by some prestigious scientists) up to the dominant orthodox position
affirming it, and differing radically on how the situation should be handled. As
always in these cases, there are some experts, or self-styled ones, who succeed
in securing the favor of the monarchs who, as in the era of the religious disputes
that once divided Christianity, side with one current or another according to their
own interests and impose measures accordingly.

Another thing to think about is the obvious collapse of any conviction, or

common faith. One could say say that men no longer believe in anything at all
— except for bare biological existence which must be saved at any cost. But
proceeding from the fear of losing one’s life can only result in tyranny, the
monstrous Leviathan with his drawn sword.

Once the emergency, the plague, has been declared over — if it ever will— I do
not believe that it will be possible to return to life as it was before, not for anyone
who has maintained a modicum of clarity. And this is perhaps the greatest cause
for despair (la cosa più disperante) — even if, as has been said, “Only for those
who no longer have hope has hope been given.”

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Giorgio Agamben: Social Distancing
Posted on April 7, 2020 by Julius Gavroche

From the online site, Quodlibet …

Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us look for him everywhere. The premeditation of
death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learned to die has unlearned to serve.
Michel de Montaigne

Since history teaches us that every social phenomenon has or may have political implications,
it is appropriate to carefully record the new concept that recently made its entry into the
political lexicon of the West: “social distancing”. Although the term was probably produced as
a euphemism to substitute for the crudeness of the term “confinement” used so far, one must
ask oneself what a political order based on it could be. This is all the more urgent, as it concerns
not only a theoretical hypothesis. And, if it is true, as many are saying, that the current health
emergency can be considered as the laboratory in which new political and social structures that
await humanity are being prepared.

Although there are, as always, fools who suggest that such a situation can certainly be
considered positive and that the new digital technologies have long allowed people to happily
communicate from a distance, I do not believe that a community founded on “social distancing”
is humanly and politically viable. In any case, whatever the perspective, it seems to me that it
is on this issue that we should reflect.

A first consideration concerns the truly singular nature of the phenomenon that the measures
of “social distancing” have produced. In Elias Canetti’s masterpiece Crowds and Power, he
defines the crowd or the mass on which power is based as the inversion of the fear of being
touched. While men usually fear being touched by the stranger and all the distances that men
establish around themselves arise from this fear, the mass is the only situation in which this
fear is overturned to become its opposite. “It is only in a crowd that man can become free of
this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite.
… As soon as a man has surrendered himself to the crowd, he ceases to fear its touch. … The
man pressed against him is the same as himself. He feels him as he feels himself. Suddenly it is
as though everything were happening in one and the same body. … This reversal of the fear of
being touched belongs to the nature of crowds. The feeling of relief is most striking where the
density of the crowd is greatest.”
I do not know what Canetti would have thought of the new phenomenology of the mass that
we have before us: what the measures of social distancing and panic have created is certainly a
mass – but an inverted mass, so to speak, made up of individuals who at all costs keep each other
at distance. A mass therefore that lacks density, that is rarefied and which, however, is still a
mass, if this, as Canetti clarifies shortly after, is defined by its compactness and its passivity, in
the sense that “it is impossible for it to move really freely. … it waits. It waits for a head [or a
leader] to be shown it”.

A few pages later, Canetti describes the mass that is formed by a refusal, a prohibition, in which
“a large number of people together refuse to continue to do what, till then, they had done singly.

5
They obey a prohibition, and this prohibition is sudden and self-imposed. … in any case, it
strikes with enormous power. It is as absolute as a command, but what is decisive about it is its
negative character.”

It is important not to overlook that a community founded on social distancing would not be
one, as could be naively believed, characterised by an extreme individualism: it would be,
precisely on the contrary, like the one we see today around us, a rarefied mass based on a
prohibition, but, precisely for this reason, particularly compact and passive.

April 6, 2020

Giorgio Agamben

6
Giorgio Agamben: Medicine as Religion

SATURDAY, MAY 2, 2020 ~ ADAM KOTSKO

That science has become the religion of our time, that in which people believe they believe, has
been obvious for some time now. In the modern West there have coexisted and, to a certain
extent, still coexist three great systems of belief: Christianity, capitalism, and science. In the
history of modernity, these three “religions” have often intersected, entering from time to time
into conflict and later reconciling in a different way, until they progressively reached a sort of
peaceful, articulated coexistence, if not a true and proper collaboration in the name of a
common interest.

What is new is that between science and the other two religions there has ignited, without our
noticing it, a subterranean and implacable conflict, the successful results of which for science
are daily before our eyes and determine in an unheard-of way all aspects of our existence. This
conflict does not concern, as happened in the past, theory or general principles, but, so to speak,
cultic practice. Indeed, science too, like every religion, knows diverse forms and levels through
which it organizes and orders its structure: to the elaboration of a subtle and rigorous dogmatic
there corresponds in practice an extremely broad and widespread cultic sphere which coincides
with what we call technology.

It is not surprising that the protagonist of this new war of religions should be that part of science
where the dogmatic is less rigorous and the pragmatic aspect stronger: medicine, whose
immediate object is the living body of human beings. Let us attempt to fix the essential character
of this victorious faith with which we must increasingly settle accounts.

1. The first characteristic is that medicine, like capitalism, has no need of a special
dogmatic, but limits itself to borrowing its fundamental concepts from biology. In
contrast with biology, however, it articulates these concepts in a Gnostic-Manichean
sense, that is, according to an exaggerated dualistic opposition. There is a malign god or
principle, namely disease, whose specific agents are bacteria and viruses, and a
beneficent god or principle, which is not health, but recovery, whose cultic agents are
medicines and therapy. As in every Gnostic faith, the two principles are clearly
separated, but in practice they can contaminate each other and the beneficent principle
and the doctor who represents it can make a mistake and unknowingly collaborate with
their enemy, without this invalidating in any way the reality of the dualism and the
necessity of the cult through which the beneficent principle fights its battle. And it is
significant that the theologians who set its strategy are the representatives of a science,
virology, that does not have its own place, but is situated at the border between biology
and medicine.

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 2. If this cultic practice up to now was, like every liturgy, episodic and limited in time, the
unexpected phenomenon that we are witnessing is that it has become permanent and
all-pervasive. It is no longer a question of taking medicines or submitting when
necessary to a doctor visit or surgical intervention: the whole life of human beings must
become in every instant the place of an uninterrupted cultic celebration. The enemy,
the virus, is always present and must be fought unceasingly and without any possible
truce. The Christian religion also knew similar totalitarian tendencies, but they
concerned only some individuals—in particular, monks—who chose to put their entire
existence under the emblem “pray unceasingly.” Medicine as religion takes up this
Pauline precept and, at the same time, reverses it: where monks gathered together in
convents to pray constantly, now the cult must be practiced even more assiduously, but
while remaining separated and at a distance.

3. Cultic practice is no longer free and voluntary, exposed only to sanctions of a spiritual
order, but must be rendered normatively obligatory. The collusion between religion and
profane power is certainly not a new thing; what is completely new, however, is that it
no longer concerns, as happened for heresies, the profession of dogmas, but exclusively
the celebration of the cult. Profane power must keep watch so that the liturgy of the
medical religion, which coincides by now with all of life, should be observed point by
point in deeds. That we are dealing here with a cultic practice and not a rational
scientific demand is immediately obvious. The most frequent cause of death in our
country by far are cardiovascular diseases and it is well known that these could be
reduced if we practiced a healthier form of life and if we followed a particular diet. But
it has never crossed the mind of any doctor that this form of life and diet, which they
recommended to the patient, should become the object of a juridical norm, which would
decree ex lege what must be eaten and how we should life, transforming our whole life
into a health requirement. Precisely this has been done and, at least for now, people
have accepted, as if it were obvious, renouncing their own freedom of movement, work,
friendships, loves, social relations, their own religious and political convictions.

Here we see the extent to which the two other religions of the West, the religion of Christ and
the religion of money, have ceded primacy, apparently without a fight, to medicine and science.
The Church has renounced its principles purely and simply, forgetting that the saint whose
name the current pope has taken embraced lepers, that one of the works of mercy was visiting
the sick, that the sacraments can be administered only in person. Capitalism for its part, albeit
with some protest, has accepted losses of productivity that it has never dared to consider,
probably hoping to find later on an arrangement with the new religion, which at this point
seems disposed to reach a settlement.

4. The medical religion has unreservedly taken up from Christianity the eschatological
urgency that the latter had let fall by the wayside. Already capitalism, in secularizing
the theological paradigm of salvation, had eliminated the idea of an end of days,
substituting for it a permanent state of crisis, without redemption or end. Krisis is
originally a medical concept, which in the Hippocratic corpus designated the moment
when the doctor decided whether the patient would survive the disease. Theologians

8
 took up the term to indicate the Last Judgment which takes place on the last day. If we
observe the state of exception in which we are living, we would say that the medical
religion conjoins together the perpetual crisis of capitalism with the Christian idea of an
end time, of an eschaton in which the final decision is always underway and the end is
both precipitated and dilated, in the unceasing attempt to be able to govern it, yet
without ever resolving it once and for all. It is the religion of a world that feels as though
it is a the end and yet is not in a position, like the Hippocratic doctor, to decide whether
it will survive or it will die.

5. Like capitalism and unlike Christianity, the medical religion does not offer the prospect
of salvation and redemption. On the contrary, the recovery which it seeks can only be
provisional, since the evil God, the virus, cannot be eliminated once and for all, but
mutates continually and assumes ever new, presumably more dangerous, forms.
Epidemic, as the etymology of the term suggests (demos is in Greek the people as a
political body and polemos epidemios is in Homer the name for civil war) is above all a
political concept, which is preparing to become the new terrain of world politics—or
non-politics. It is possible, however, that the epidemic that we are living will be the
actualization of the global civil war that, according to the most attentive political
theorists, has taken the place of traditional world wars. All nations and all peoples are
now in an enduring war with themselves, because the invisible and elusive enemy with
which they are struggling is within us.

As has happened many times in the course of history, philosophers must again enter into
conflict with religion, which is no longer Christianity, but science or that part of it that has
assumed the form of a religion. I do not know if bonfires will return and books will be put on
the Index, but clearly the thought of those who continue to seek the truth and reject the
dominant lie will be, as is already happening before our eyes, excluded and accused of spreading
fake news (news, not ideas, because news is more important than reality!). As in all moments
of emergency, real or simulated, we see once again the ignorant slander philosophers and
scoundrels seeking to profit from the disasters that they themselves have provoked. All this has
already happened and will continue to happen, but those who testify to the truth will not stop
doing so, because no one can bear witness for the witness.

9
The Biopolitics of Immunity in Times of COVID-19: An
Interview with Roberto Esposito
16th June 2020

The Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito is the author of various influential books,
including the trilogy Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community (translated by
Timothy Campbell and published by Stanford University Press in 2004; originally
published in Italian in 1998), Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of
Life (translated by Zakiya Hanafi and published by Polity Press in 2011; originally
published in Italian in 2002) and Bìos: Biopolitics and Philosophy (translated by
Timothy Campbell and published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2008;
originally published in Italian in 2004). In these works, Esposito examines the
relationship between the community and mechanisms of immunization in modern
biopolitics. He characterizes modern biopolitics through the tension between living in
community and immunizing the population from threats to its health. Though these
immunitary mechanisms are necessary, they also tend to undermine the demands of
communal life. Taken beyond a certain limit, immunitary mechanisms can turn against
the community they are supposed to protect. Given the centrality of the tension
between immunity and community in the work of Roberto Esposito – who is currently
working from his home in Naples – we asked him how he is experiencing the pandemic
and all the related developments of the past months.[1]

Tim Christiaens (KU Leuven; t.christiaens@kuleuven.be) and Stijn De Cauwer

(KU Leuven; stijn.decauwer@kuleuven.be)

How have the last few months been for you?

These have been sad months, as for all of us. Sad because of the pain of missing
people. Sad because of the way we all had to live. Sad because it was impossible for
me to go to Pisa, to the university where I teach [at the Scuola Normale Superiore]. In
Naples the virus was not very strong and my daily life has not fundamentally changed,
because when I am in Naples I stay at home a lot anyway and work from home. But,
of course, the whole horizon has changed so much that even in my work I felt the
impact of this situation, and so I had to change both the form and also some of the
contents of my work. I could not simply ignore what was happening. Particularly my
work on the category of immunization has become very topical, but also my more
recent work on the category of the institution. Despite all the possible criticisms, without
institutions we would not have been able to withstand this pandemic. Nevertheless, the
situation in Italy is improving and, therefore, there is hope that all this will somehow
come to an end.

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You said that the notion of immunity that you have already worked on is very important
in this crisis. How do you see the connection between virological immunity and political
or biopolitical immunity?

The past months – in Italy at least, but I believe also elsewhere – this word “immunity”
has been used continuously. We are all seeking immunity in one sense or another.
There is even an app in Italy called “Immuni” that has been developed to track
movements and notify people when they have been exposed to someone infected.
Socially and politically speaking, even face masks and social distancing are part of an
immunitarian attitude toward human interaction. So, immunity is at the center of
everyday life today. Of course, immunity has various dimensions, politically, legally,
socially, and obviously medically. So let us say the immunization process has a much
longer history. In some ways, its history even coincides with that of modernity itself.
Modernity arises precisely from the need to build protections when the religious
dispositifs from the Middle Ages and their emphasis on transcendence lose their
legitimacy. The moderns were the people who saw themselves exposed to so many
risks and began to build immunitary dispositifs to protect themselves rather than relying
on some kind of salvation from God. The most important one among these dispositifs
was the state. The state is a great immunitary dispositif to protect life, as Hobbes said.
The law is also an immunitary dispositif against conflicts that would otherwise destroy
society. In modern times, there has been a very strong acceleration in the need for
immunitary security and, today, immunity has become, in my opinion, the pivot around
which all our entire modern symbolic universe revolves. However, immunity is
something ambivalent: it generates its own risks and dangers as well. To connect this
to the contemporary crisis, during the pandemic, the intertwining of politics and
medicine has become absolutely central. On the one hand, medicine has become
politicized in the crisis, as shown by the conflicts between virologists and
epidemiologists on what seems like purely scientific questions. These are, in fact, also
of a social and geo-political nature. On the other hand, politics has become
medicalized, treating the citizen as a patient in need of perpetual care and turning
social deviance into an epidemic disruption to be treated or suppressed. Of course,
this has very significant consequences. Giving doctors the task of political decision-
making, on the one hand, strongly reduces the scope for political action and, on the
other hand, radically transforms the political arena, making deviance a pathological
condition.

To stay on this matter for a while, do you see a difference between the political
strategies of some European countries and, for example, the United States? In the
United States or the UK, people had been talking about herd immunity, while in Italy
or France governments quickly went for a lockdown.

That’s an interesting word. In Italian, we call this “immunità di gregge”, which literally
translates to “flock immunity”. It recalls Foucault’s concept of pastoral power insofar as
the government functions as a shepherd for the population as a flock. And yes, there
is a quite clear difference between the policies of the Latin countries, like Spain, Italy,
and France, which all went into lockdown, and some other countries. Initially only Italy
went into lockdown, but then the others followed quickly. On the other side of the
debate, the United Kingdom, the United States and even some Northern European
countries like Sweden initially tried to follow this path of herd immunity. But this choice
is, honestly, a form of eugenics, and in some ways even thanatopolitical, because it

11
entails the deaths of a considerable number of people who would otherwise live. For
herd immunity to develop, many of the weakest people are destined to die, as Boris
Johnson also admitted. He said that “many more families are going to lose loved ones
before their time”.[2] However, these countries quickly changed course. The UK and
the US also chose lockdowns eventually, albeit in different forms than what we have
experienced in continental Europe. Let’s say that my assessment of herd immunity is
a rather negative one: it acts as a form of autoimmune disease, that is, it tries to protect
life through the death of a part of the population. The only non-negative population-
wide form of immunity – i.e. one not based on the sacrifice of innocent victims –
depends on the discovery of a vaccine. That is, if we ever get one. The lockdown
strategy, on the other hand, has its own problems, by the way, and other risks linked
to desocialization. The immunitary lockdown conflicts, beyond a certain level, both with
individual freedom and with the exigencies of life as a community. So lockdowns are
also risky immunitary dispositifs causing many problems we are only discovering since
a few weeks. But, in my opinion, it is still preferable to herd immunity.

It is said that the measures of social distancing and isolation undermine the social
fabric. Would you agree with this criticism?

The expression of social distancing is quite paradoxical. Distancing cannot be social

and distancing always produces effects of desocialization and a reduction of communal
forms of life. In my opinion, as with immunity, it is a matter of measure, of finding the
right balance, in the sense that all human and social bodies need a certain degree of
immunization, but should be cautious of extremes. There is not one individual or social
body that does not have an immune system. It would die without protection and a
certain degree of immunization. The immunity system is necessary for survival, but
when it crosses a certain threshold, it starts destroying the body it aims to defend. That
threshold is crossed exactly when social distancing demands a total rupture of social
bonds. At that moment, it becomes an anti-communitarian propensity. Beyond a
certain level, the social fabric, obviously, does not hold up. It becomes unravelled and
then it breaks down. The most significant characteristic of the human condition is that
of social relationships. A form of life without such relationships, a life that coincides
with bare survival, cannot sustain a community for long; it would be a society
completely based on bare life, but it would not be worth living.

An area deeply affected by this crisis is the university. At the moment, all research and
teaching is done online. What do you think about this digital transformation of the
higher education system?

I believe that, up to a certain degree, this method also has some advantages today. It,
for example, still allows for contacts like the one we have at the moment [the interview
took place via Skype]. But even this method I consider to be, in itself, predominantly
negative, because it also leads to desocialization. All research groups, study groups,
libraries, campuses, university colleges are in danger of disappearing. Giorgio
Agamben has published a text on this issue, which, in my opinion, starts from correct
premises.[3] He emphasizes this problem of desocialization, claiming that entirely
digital classrooms are no proper substitute for student life. But then he goes so far as
to say that those who use digital media are comparable to fascists and this seems to
me at least exaggerated. However, I share the analysis of the risks that accompany
digital didactics. In my own situation, for example, I teach at the Scuola Normale

12
Superiore in Pisa, which bases its teaching on continuous contact between students
and teachers. This is only possible when people can be physically present to each
other. If that remains impossible, this model is lost and, with it, thousand-year-old
university traditions will be lost. I repeat though, this does not exclude that, in some
cases, online teaching is necessary. It is still better than nothing, but it should be limited
in time and in its application.

Let us turn to the economic side of the pandemic for a moment, such as the relationship
between medical interests and economic interests. On the one hand, the economy is
shut down for medical reasons, but, on the other hand, there are some sectors that
benefit from it, like the digital sector. Companies such as Amazon benefit from the
crisis, while workers in these sectors have to work very hard and expose themselves
to considerable risks of infection. This also applies, for example, to medical staff and
factory workers. What do you think about this?

This epidemic crisis shows just how profoundly our society is marked by inequality.
The economy and public health now have a negative impact on each other, with
medical demands effectively undermining the economic cycle, like you said. Some jobs
continue, many others do not. But, more importantly, weaker workers, like immigrants,
are exposed to risk, while the more protected workers are allowed to avoid these risks.
The public health measures split the economy in two, as it were. It exacerbates a
distinction already present in our economy between exploited workers and certain
privileged groups that financially even benefit from this pandemic. Google, Amazon,
but also large industrial groups are taking advantage of this crisis to increase their
profits. The workers of these companies, such as delivery drivers, warehouse workers,
and many others, are in a condition that has become almost a kind of semi-slavery.
They do everything to keep their jobs, but they are forced to work in increasingly
dangerous environments. In my view, this shows that our capitalist society is
fundamentally an unequal society. In critical situations, this inequality becomes more
pronounced, but also less and less bearable. What is happening in America right now
with the protests following the death of George Floyd is not merely the result of a history
of racism. It is also a protest against a society that has dismantled the welfare state,
social security services, and publicly available medicine. Trump’s policies have
undermined even the timid reforms Obama made in the past. So we must be aware of
the fact that Western societies today risk sliding off into generalized social conflict.
There’s no doubt about it.

What kind of economy would you suggest? How should the economic recovery be
organized? Should it still be based on capitalism or would you have something else in
mind, like the commons?

My evaluation of capitalism remains that it produces inequality and suffering. On the

other hand, no one has imagined a really viable alternative model, unless we return to
bartering, which seems a little difficult. In fact, all the communist systems of the 20th
century either failed or became capitalist, as in China. To criticize the capitalist model
as such, one would need have another model in mind, which we do not have. Critique
should hence rather be formulated within the framework of the capitalist economy.
Here we can make some important steps in the direction of the commons, as a third
option beyond private and public ownership. Private goods belong to private individuals
and public goods belong to the state, but the commons are the goods that belong to

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everyone alike because they do not allow for any claims of exclusive ownership. There
is a lot of reflection and an entire social movement comprising jurists, philosophers and
economists that have for some years now relaunched this theme of the commons. I
won’t go into a lot of detail right now, but the decisive point, for me, is to think not about
replacing the category of ownership with that of use, but of promoting common use as
an alternative besides existing forms of private and public ownership. Ownership
implies that only one person can consume and even destroy goods, whereas use
means that goods are available to anyone. That would be one part of my answer. On
the other hand, I think the capitalist economy should move towards a model that is
more compatible with environmental values. It should undergo radical ecological
reform, a green reform. For some people, digitization is even part of the answer here.
In any case, I personally am in favour of what in Italy we call “la tassa patrimoniale”, a
tax directly levied on personal wealth. It is predominantly a form of taxation for those
owning a lot of private assets. Almost everyone is against this policy, even many left-
wing parties. There is a fear that the rich will move abroad. But, in my opinion, a strong
tax is crucial to combat wealth inequality. Right now, there is an enormous
disproportion in wealth, both between countries and within each individual country.
This is a situation that can hardly be sustained in the long run, even without having to
imagine the overcoming of capitalism or a revolution. Those options are rather unlikely,
so one can and must operate within the capitalist model. Even then, however, the
capitalism of the New Deal can hardly be equated with the capitalism of Thatcher and
Reagan. Even within capitalism there exist different ways of understanding the
relationship between economics and politics.

The European Union is particularly absent in the response to the pandemic, but do you
think it has a role to play in organizing the economic recovery?

The European Union cannot do much with its powers limited by its individual member
states. It simply does not have that kind of power. The European Union could tax
Google or Amazon, but for a wealth tax it would need resources that it does not have
at its disposal. That is, the European Union needs a central bank similar to the US
Federal Reserve, but the European Central Bank does not have the same level of
authority. But above all, it would need a political legitimacy that it doesn’t have at the
moment. If you remember the failed referendums about the European constitution, it
is clear that the democratic legitimacy of the European institutions is inadequate. Since
then, Europe has lost its political soul and has become an aggregation of countries in
which, let us say, there are three types of states. At one extreme, there have been
fragile member states such as Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Then there are states
that naturally pursue their own interests, but do so with a more open mind, like France
and Germany. And then there are the so-called frugal states, the Netherlands, Austria,
Sweden and Denmark, together with the countries from the Visegrad Group, that want
to weaken the Union. They want to ensure that Europe has no chance of development.
In my opinion, those states would do better to leave the Union or at least leave the EU
free to develop its own course. The EU is trying, however, to do better despite the odds
stacked against it. It has made a number of billions available for the economic recovery
and has removed some past restrictions on weaker economies. However, as long as
the mechanism of voting unanimity for European decision-making remains in place, it
will be difficult to move forward. There will always be one state blocking everything.
Having said that, however, Europe remains the only possible hope for the European
countries. I find it very difficult to imagine a return to sovereign nation-states. They

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would have no leverage with respects to Russia, China, or the United States. The
European Union is a necessary institution, but it must change.

In your writings you regularly mention “affirmative biopolitics” as an alternative way of

living with each other. In contrast to thanatopolitics, affirmative biopolitics would know
how to affirm life without creating autoimmunitarian reactions. What would that mean
today?

The virus is a fact, unfortunately, and we won’t be able to escape it any time soon. As
long as there is no vaccine, we will have to live with the virus out of necessity. But this
is not an affirmative biopolitics. An affirmative form of biopolitics would instead focus
on heavy investments in public health facilities, building hospitals, making medicine
affordable or giving medications free of charge, maintaining comfortable living
conditions for the population, and protecting doctors and nurses who have died during
the epidemic. For example, everyone knows that in Africa, even before this pandemic,
there were serious problems with endemic diseases, such as AIDS and Ebola. To
confront these crises, pharmaceutical companies should decrease the price of
medication. These are now artificially increased via intellectual property rights at the
cost of African lives. A lot of lives would be saved if prices went down. This fight against
the pharmaceutical industries is crucial. This is what I would call an affirmative form of
biopolitics. From my point of view, affirmative biopolitics also means, for instance, de-
privatizing the water supply, reclaiming and protecting forests, and also combatting the
inequalities I just mentioned. In Italy, there has been a significant battle about keeping
water supplies public and about defending public lands. But these initiatives are
currently interrupted by anti-pandemic measures. These struggles should be resumed
as part of a green restructuring of the economy. At the moment, living with the virus is
the condition we are in, but it is not our choice. The other measures I have mentioned
could establish an affirmative and beneficial policy for human life.

What do you think is the main obstacle to cultivating this attitude of affirmative
biopolitics?

The conservatism of the ruling classes in Western countries who lack the courage to
make radical reforms. On the contrary, my impression is that some countries and some
leading industrial groups are already trying to make money from the crisis. Some
groups have invested heavily in the development of the vaccine and now they are
hoping that the virus will not go away, because they want to secure the returns on their
investments. There is the fear that the virus will disappear sooner and then their
vaccine will never be sold. This is, of course, very sad; the fact that someone could
hope for a deadly virus to spread so that one can make a profit out of it. My impression
is that in the face of an emergency such as this, the entire way of doing politics should
change. Instead, we seem to be moving back to the way politics was done before. A
policy of profit, of competition, and therefore of power, does not consider the tens of
thousands of deaths that have occurred, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, and it
cannot adequately face the economic challenges ahead. In Italy, the number of
unemployed people has grown enormously, but also in the United States. The only
upside for the United States is that it could lead to the electoral defeat of Trump, but
even that is not a given.

How to convince the ruling classes, then, to change their minds?

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In politics, convincing people has never been the best option. In political philosophy
one distinguishes between politics and the political. The former refers to the official
institutions of political government, while the latter refers to the fundamental conflicts
of the modern condition. I’m not talking about violence here. I just mean that society is
instituted through deeply embedded political conflict. This also opens the way to new
forms of solidarity, by the way. At this stage of the crisis people are united because
they face the same difficulties and, therefore, they also try to help each other wherever
they can. Think about how the doctors have conducted themselves during the crisis.
Even wearing a mask can be understood as a form of solidarity, because you are
protecting others by wearing it. But this form of solidarity is, in my opinion, not enough
to radically change politics. These forms of community are temporary and limited. For
there to be real and effective change, a political struggle is needed.

You recently wrote a new book, Pensiero istituente: Tre paradigmi di ontologia
politica (Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, 2020), which deals with the philosophy of Claude
Lefort, one of the thinkers of political conflict, and the need to create political
institutions. How do you think Lefort might have responded to this situation today? Is
he a thinker relevant to this situation?

In that book I used Lefort’s model mainly to criticize other models: the political
ontologies of Heidegger and Deleuze. Some interpret Lefort in a liberal sense and
others in a more radical sense. I obviously try to follow the radical interpretation. He
basically says that political order, as well as a democratic order, requires conflict, but
this has also been written by other authors. I am thinking, for example, of Jacques
Rancière, but in some ways I am also thinking of Machiavelli, an important thinker for
Lefort, who wrote that the power of ancient Rome arose out of the presence of social
conflicts. Lefort and Machiavelli argue that the idea of the people as a whole, as a
sovereign people, a democratic people, is an abstraction because the people are
always divided by conflicts between various interests and values. This element is, in
my opinion, fundamental to the political. What I call “the number of politics” is never
one, but two. Politics is not about political theology, which tries to reduce two to one,
subsuming political conflict eventually under the power of a single sovereign, but it is
rather about agonistic republicanism, radical democracy or conflict, because it is
fundamentally marked by division and opposition. This Lefortian approach sees in
conflict the very form of the social, that is, the social as such is conflictual. If there were
no political conflicts, the social would be undifferentiated. It would be a mass made up
of many disconnected individuals lacking a political form. The political form institutes
an arena that grants space to opposition and struggle at the heart of the social field.
Carl Schmitt, who is certainly not a leftist theorist, made a similar argument. According
to him, if there are no conflicts, there are no communities, and if there is no adversary,
people do not even identify each other as friends.

Could we say that, for example, in the United States, after the death of George Floyd
as a result of police violence, the pandemic opens a field of conflict that has spun out
of control?

Yes, because it is precisely when the social sphere collapses without finding adequate
political forms or institutions that it leads to chaos. I do not know the American situation
very well, but let us take the French situation of the “gilets jaunes”, the “yellow vest”
movement. They certainly gave Macron a blow, but I do not think they have gained any

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significant political victories, because in modernity, as well as in the present, social
conflict must find political forms in order to be productive. Their suspicion of political
institutions has in the end become an obstacle to their demands. They could have
accomplished more if they had been less suspicious of inventing and cultivating more
long-lasting political platforms. It is inevitable to think about the question of institutions
when the situation becomes explosive, as in America. There, endemic racism and
growing inequalities have created a dangerous situation. It risks manifesting itself
violently at every moment a local incident like George Floyd’s death occurs. Politically,
indeed, it can be used by Trump to spread more racism and violence, so I think we
should be careful with this development. Political conflict needs special institutions to
achieve real political reform. And yes, institutions are full of flaws and limitations. They
are often conservative and sometimes they are reactionary, but imagine how this
pandemic would have developed without institutions. Without them, the consequences
would have been disastrous. Institutions are necessary. But the point is that, with
institutions, we should not only think about the state or state apparatuses. An institution
is also a non-governmental organization or a volunteer group. The university or the
dialogue we are having right now are, in their own ways, also institutions. It is a matter
of thinking about institutions not as fixed and stable units, but as institutive practices,
that is, actions that produce innovation, but also grant some level of stability in the long
run.

Notes

[1] Interview conducted (via Skype on 3 June 2020) and translated by Tim Christiaens
and Stijn De Cauwer.

[2] The Guardian (2020) Johnson: Many more people will lose loved ones to
coronavirus. 12 March https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/12/uk-moves-to-
delay-phase-of-coronavirus-plan (last accessed 11 June 2020)

[3] Giorgio Agamben (2020) “Requiem per gli studenti.” Diario della Crisi, Istituto
Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, 22 May
https://www.iisf.it/index.php/attivita/pubblicazioni-e-archivi/diario-della-crisi/giorgio-
agamben-requiem-per-gli-studenti.html (last accessed 11 June 2020)

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