Read on Twitter
I’ve been thinking about Corona Virus a bit. And whereas I’m not a covid denier, I do think it’s okay to be critical of our governors, local government, President-elect when they use “science says” to support the gathering of political power during this “state of emergency.”
One of the things I did this morning was take some time to read what Agamben wrote last April—and honestly, I think there’s something there. Governments have accepted a strictly material or bio-logical understanding of life—which should be situated in the context of bio-politics.
Perhaps this explains why forest preserves, art museums, and churches have been closed—these things that we need now more than ever to combat the social alienation that we are all experiencing have been shut down to preserve this vague, flat notion of “life.”
It reminds me of some of the things Ivan Illich wrote about last century. “Life” was once qualitative, it was a theological category. It is with the rise of the modern age that life becomes a political, mechanical, social category that can be itemized, protected, controlled.
The institutionalization of life means that life is like one commodity among many. It loses its theological and thus base meaning—now it can be manipulated for the benefit of structures of power, like the state or the institutional church. Life can be used to disrupt, contain ζωη
What is the point of biological or material survival of this pandemic, if we abandon the human face? Who stands to gain from the reduction of all human experience to the economic, to the isolated individual? These tough questions we should be asking about our current situation.
