Giorgio Agamben: "New Reflections"

What follows is an unofficial translation of the writings of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben regarding the response of the Italian government to the Covid-19 virus.

In this time of emergency, I will be posting more such translations with the goal of disseminating modes of thinking that counters the currently dominant structures of feeling.

I purposefully try to maintain Agamben's terminology as close to the original as possible in order to try to convey its meaning fully.

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Source: https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-nuove-riflessioni

Giorgio Agamben

New Reflections

April 22, 2020

From an interview published today in an Italian newspaper

Are we living, with this forced reclusion, a new totalitarianism?

“On many sides the hypothesis is being formulated that in reality we are living the end of a world, that of bourgeois democracies, founded on rights, parliaments, and the division of powers, which is surrendering its place to a new despotism, that, in regard to the ubiquity of controls and the cessation of any political activity, it will be worse than the totalitarianisms that we have known until now. American political scientists call it the Security State, meaning a state where ‘for security reasons’ (in this case ‘public safety,’ term that recalls the notorious Committee of Public Safety during the Terror) any limit to individual liberties can be imposed. In Italy, after all, we have been accustomed to a legislation by urgent decree by executive power for some time, which in this manner substitutes itself to legislative power and in fact abolishes the principle of the separation of powers upon which democracy is based upon. And the control that is exerted by video camera and now, as it has been proposed, through cellular phones, exceeds by far any form of control exerted under the totalitarian regimes such as fascism or Nazism.”

Regarding data, besides those which will be collected through cellular phones, a reflection should be made also on data disseminated in the numerous press conferences, often incomplete or badly interpreted.

“This is an important point, because it touches the root of the phenomenon. Anyone who has some knowledge of epistemology cannot avoid being surprised by the fact that the media during all these months have disseminated numbers without any scientific criteria, not only by not comparing them to the annual mortality rate for the same period, but by not even specifying the cause of death. I am neither a virologist nor a doctor, but I limit myself to quote credible official sources. Twenty-one thousand deaths by Covid-19 seems and certainly is an impressive number. But if we compare it to the annual statistics things look different, and rightly so. The president of ISTAT [Italian National Institute of Statistics], Dr. Gian Carlo Blangiardo, a few weeks ago has issued the mortality rate for the previous year: 647,000 deaths (or 1,772 each day). If we analyze in detail the specific causes, we see that the most recent available data relative to 2017 shows 230,000 deaths due to cardiovascular diseases, 180,000 due to cancer, at least 53,000 deaths due to respiratory diseases. But one aspect is particularly important and it closely relates to our current situation.”

Which one?

“I quote the words of Dr. Blangiardo: ‘Deaths by respiratory diseases were 15,189 in March 2019 and 16,220 the year prior. Incidentally it turns out that these are more than the corresponding number of deaths by Covid (12,352) declared in March 2020.’ But if this is true and we have no reason to doubt it, without minimizing the importance of the epidemic, we must ask ourselves if this can justify those measures limiting individual liberty that had never been implemented in the history of our country, not even during the two world wars. This raises the legitimate doubt that, by spreading panic and isolating people in their homes, there was the intention of making people pay the price for the grave responsibilities of those governments that had first dismantled the national healthcare system and then, in Lombardy, committed a series of no less egregious errors in dealing with the epidemic.”

Even scientists, actually, did not come out looking good.  It seems that they were not able to give the answers that were expected from them. What do you think about this?

“It is always dangerous to allow doctors and scientists to make decisions that are ultimately ethical and political. You see, scientists, rightfully or wrongly, pursue their reasons in good faith, reasons that identify with the interest of science and in whose name ­– as history amply demonstrates – they are willing to sacrifice any moral principle. I do not need to remind you that during Nazism highly esteemed scientists guided the eugenics campaign and did not hesitate to take advantage of lagers in order to execute lethal experiments that they considered to be useful for scientific progress and for the well-being of German soldiers. The current spectacle is particularly disconcerting, because in reality, even though the media are hiding it, there is no agreement among scientists. Some illustrious ones among them, such as Didier Raoult, perhaps the most prominent French virologist, have different opinions on the importance of the epidemic and on the efficacy of the isolation measures, which in an interview he defined as a medieval superstition. Somewhere else I wrote that science has become the religion of our time. The analogy with religion must be taken literally: theologians used to declare that they could not clearly define what God is, but in his name they dictated rules of human conduct and did not hesitate to burn heretics; virologists admit not to know exactly what a virus is, but in its name they pretend to decide how human beings must live.”

We are told – as it has often happened in the past – that nothing will be as it used to and that our lives must change. What will happen in your opinion?

“I have already described the form of despotism that we must expect and against which we cannot tire to guard against. But if for a moment we set aside the present moment and we reflect upon the destiny of the human species on Earth, I am reminded of the considerations by Ludwig Bolk, a great scientist from Holland. According to Bolk, the human species is characterized by the progressive inhibition of natural vital processes of adaptation to the environment, which are substituted by an hypertrophic growth of technological devices that adapt the environment to humans. When this process surpasses a certain threshold, it reaches a point where it becomes counterproductive and it transforms itself into the destruction of the species. It seems to me that phenomenons like the one we are living through show that this threshold has been reached and that a medicine that was supposed to cure our ills is risking to produce a greater evil. We must resist against this risk with every means possible.”