Category Archives: Commentary

Albert Camus: The plague is the concern of all

Reflections on our contemporary Albert Camus on times of the pandemic … No longer merely metaphor: Re-reading The Plague by Albert Camus Kristian Williams (threewayfight, 28/03/2020) Albert Camus’ novel The Plague offers a portrait of a town under quarantine, ravaged by an epidemic. … Continue reading

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Arundhati Roy: Our task is to disable the engine

The coronavirus pandemic has brought the machine of capitalism to a grinding halt. Arundhati Roy (Progressive International, 02/05/2020) While the human race is momentarily incarcerated, and even as a record-size hole opens in the ozone layer above the Arctic, the … Continue reading

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Giorgio Agamben: Biosecurity and politics

Sharing the continuing reflections of Giorgio Agamben on the COVID-19 pandemic …

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Nietzschean reflections in times of the pandemic

Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a … Continue reading

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Tomás Ibáñez: The State and the pandemic

You might as well be hung for deathAs breaking a machine–So now my Lad, your sword unsheathAnd make it sharp and keen- We are ready now your cause to joinWhenever you may call;So make foul blood run clear & fineOf … Continue reading

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COVID-19: Translating a pandemic politically (3)

The new experience that has replaced dignified suffering is artificially prolonged, opaque, depersonalized maintenance. Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis I If political sovereignty is defined by the decision on the exception (Carl Schmitt), on what is to be excluded from and … Continue reading

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Mapping our dystopia

We continue to share translations from the not bored collective which are generously forwarded to us. Ongoing reflections on the politics of a pandemic …

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Santiago López Petit: Coronavirus as theatre of truth

Humanity is entering a phase of its history in which truth is reduced to a moment in the movement of the false. True is that false speech that must be kept true even when its untruth is proven. But in … Continue reading

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Achille Mbembe: The necropolitics of a pandemic

… the ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die. Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics From a brazilian newspaper, an interview with Achille Mbembe … Mbembe … Continue reading

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Giorgio Agamben: A Question

A further contribution for the understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic from Giorgio Agamben. We again thank the not bored! collective for this translation. This is a text which we partially shared in an earlier post. A Question Giorgio Agamben(1) For … Continue reading

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