Giorgio Agamben: "Reflections on the Plague"

Disclaimer: this is an unofficial translation.

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

Giorgio Agamben

Reflections on the Plague

March 27, 2020

The reflections that follow do not concern the epidemic, but what we can understand from people’s reactions to it. It is about, that is, the reflection upon the easiness with which an entire society has accepted to feel pestilential, to isolate at home and to suspend its normal life conditions, its work, friendship, and love relations and even its religious and political convictions. Why were not there, as it was also possible to imagine and as it usually happens in these cases, protests and oppositions? The hypothesis that I would like to suggest is that somehow, albeit unconsciously, the plague was already there, that, evidently, people’s life conditions had become such, that a sudden sign was enough for these to appear as they were — that is, intolerable, like a pestilence indeed. And this, in some sense, is the only positive data that can be drawn from the present situation: it is possible that, later on, people might start asking themselves if the way they were living was right. And what no less must be reflected upon is the need of religion that the situation shows. A clue for this is, in the hammering discourse by the media, the terminology borrowed from the eschatological vocabulary that, to describe the phenomenon, obsessively resorts, particularly in the American media, to the word “apocalypse” and evokes, often explicitly, the end of the world. It is as if the religious need, that the Church is no longer able to satisfy, was hesitantly searching for a place to constitute itself and was finding it in that which has by now become the de facto religion of our time: science. This, like every religion, can produce superstition and fear or, in any case, can be used to spread them. Never like today had we witnessed the spectacle, typical of religions in moments of crisis, of differing and contradictory opinions, that goes from the minority heretical position (even represented by prestigious scientists) of those who negate the gravity of the phenomenon to the dominant orthodox discourse that affirms and, nevertheless, diverges often radically on the modalities for confronting it. And, like always in these cases, some experts or self-styled ones can secure the favor of the monarch, who, as in those times of religious disputes that divided Christianity, takes sides with one current or the other and imposes its measures.

One other thing that makes one think is the evident collapse of every common conviction and faith. It could be said that that people no longer believe in anything — besides the naked biological existence that must be preserved at any cost. But on the fear of losing life only a tyranny can be founded, only the monstrous Leviathan with a drawn sword.

Because of this — once the emergency, the plague, will be declared finished, if it will— I do not believe that, at least for those who have preserved a minimum of lucidity, it will be possible to return to live as before. And this is today perhaps the most despairing thing — even though, as it has been said, “only to those who have no longer hope, hope has been given.”