Giorgio Agamben: "On Truth and Falsehood"

Disclaimer: this is an unofficial translation.

Source: https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-sul-vero-e-sul-falso

Giorgio Agamben

On Truth and Falsehood

April 28, 2020

As expected, the Phase 2 confirms, by government decree, more or less the same diminutions of constitutional freedoms that can only be curtailed by law. But no less important is the limitation of a human right which is not enshrined in any constitution: the right to truth, the need of a true word.

What we are living in, before it being an unprecedented manipulation of everyone’s freedom, is, in fact, a gigantic operation of falsification of truth. If people agree to limit their personal liberty, this happens, in fact, because they accept without any verification the data and opinions that are provided by the media. Advertising had accustomed us for some time to discourses that were more effective because they did not pretend to be true. And for some time even political consensus was granted without deep conviction, assuming somehow that in electoral speeches truth was not into question. What is now happening under our own eyes is, however, something new, if only because with the truthfulness or the falsehood of the discourse that is currently passively accepted our very way of living, our whole, daily existence is at stake. For this reason, it would be urgent for everyone to try testing what is being proposed to them to at least an elementary verification.

I was not the only one to note that the data on the epidemic are provided in a generic manner and without any scientific criteria. From the epistemological point of view, it is obvious, for example, that to provide a number of deaths without relating it to the annual mortality rate for the same period and without specifying the effective cause of death has no meaning. Yet, this is exactly what is being done every day apparently without anyone noticing. This is even more surprising since the data that enable a verification are available to whomever would like to access them and I have already cited in this column the report by the president of ISTAT [Italian National Institute of Statistics] Gian Carlo Blangiardo that shows how the number of deaths by Covid-19 is inferior to the deaths by respiratory diseases in the previous two years. And yet, however unequivocal, it is as if this relationship did not exist, just as it has not been taken into consideration the fact, although declared, that even the positive patient who died by heart attack or any other cause is presumed to have died by Covid-19. Why, even when falsehood is documented, it is still believed? It could be said that a lie is assumed to be true exactly because, like advertising, it does not bother to hide its own falsity. As it happened for the first World War, the war against the virus can provide only false reasons.

Humanity is entering a phase of its history where truth is reduced to a moment within the movement of falsehood. True is that false discourse which must be assumed to be true even when its untruthfulness is demonstrated. But in this manner it is language itself as the site of the manifestation of truth that is being confiscated from human beings. Now they can only silently observe this movement — true because it is real — of the lie. For this reason, to stop this movement it is necessary for everyone to have the courage to search uncompromisingly for the most precious commodity: a true word.