Giorgio Agamben: The coronaviris and the state of exception

Before the frenzied, irrational and totally unjustified emergency measures taken for a supposed epidemic due to the coronavirus, it is necessary to start with the declarations of the CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), according to which “there is no epidemic of Sars-CoV2 in Italy “.

And that’s not all: “the infection, according to the epidemiological data available today from tens of thousands of cases, causes mild/moderate symptoms (a kind of flu) in 80 to 90% of cases. In 10 to 15% of cases, pneumonia can develop, but the evolution is benign in the absolute majority of cases. It is estimated that only 4% of patients need to be hospitalized in intensive care.”

If this is the real situation, why are the media and the authorities trying to spread a climate of panic, provoking a real state of emergency/exception, with severe limitations on movement and a suspension of the normal functioning of living and working conditions in whole regions?

Two factors can help to explain such disproportionate behavior.

First, there is once again a growing tendency to use the state of exception as a normal paradigm of government. The legislative decree immediately approved by the government “for reasons of public health and safety” leads to a real militarisation “of municipalities and areas where at least one person has tested positive but whose transmission source is unknown or is not attributable to a person from an area already infected with the virus”. Such a vague and indefinite formula will quickly extend the state of emergency to all regions, since it is almost impossible that other cases will not occur elsewhere.

Consider the serious restrictions on freedom provided for by the decree: prohibition from leaving the municipality or the area concerned for anyone present in the municipality or the area; prohibition of access to the municipality or the area concerned; suspension of demonstrations or initiatives of any kind, events and any form of meeting in a public or private place, including cultural, recreational, sports and religious, even if they take place in closed places open to the public; suspension of educational services for children and of schools of all levels, as well as of attendance at school and higher education activities, except for distance education activities; suspension of services for the opening to the public of museums and other cultural institutions and places referred to in article 101 of the cultural heritage and landscape code, in accordance with the legislative decree of January 22, 2004, n. 42, as well as of the regulatory provisions on open and free access to these institutions and places; suspension of all educational trips, both at home and abroad; suspension of collective proceedings and the activities of public offices, without prejudice to the provision of essential and public utility services; application of the quarantine measure with active surveillance of people who have been in close contact with confirmed cases of generalised infectious disease.

The disproportion in the face of what, according to the CNR, is a normal flu, little different from those which recur each year, is obvious.

It would seem that, terrorism having been exhausted as the cause of measures of exception, the invention of an epidemic could offer the ideal pretext for extending them beyond all limits.

The other factor, no less worrying, is the state of fear which has manifestly spread in recent years in the minds of individuals and which translates into a real need for collective states of panic, to which the epidemic offers again the ideal pretext.

Thus, in a vicious and perverse circle, the limitation of freedom imposed by governments is accepted in the name of a desire for security which has been induced by these same governments which are now intervening to satisfy it.

Giorgio Agamben

(26/02/2020)

This article originally appeared in Italian on the website of the newspaper Il Manifesto. A french language version of the text was published with Acta.Zone.

This entry was posted in Commentary, News blog and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.