Viral Submission
on the Emerging Totalitarianism of the New Biopolitics
Giorgio Agamben likes to shock. His 2021 book, Where Are We Now? The Epidemic as Politics, makes the boldest of claims. Fear of catching a virus—and fear of death, for that matter—is irrational and has caused us to elevate "bare life," or what Agamben terms zōē, above any consideration of the particularities of our life, what he calls bios. (As an aside, Saint John's Gospel has a much richer use of the term zōē, using it to designate "eternal life.")
The current elevation of "bare life," reinforced by the coronavirus panic, offers political opportunity: world rulers use it to pursue their own, totalitarian ends. Conspiracy theories—particularly those involving Bill Gates—should be taken seriously. Science (or medicine) has become a religion, replacing Christianity and capitalism as top religious contender. Biopolitics is transforming the right to health into an obligation to be healthy. Mask mandates purge our common life of its political dimension. Social distancing—witnessed most notably in online learning and in the evacuation of physical, public sites of political and cultural discourse—is here to stay. The traditional division of powers (legislative, executive, and judiciary power) is collapsing through extended states of emergency as executive powers establish a "Security State."
The shock effect reaches its zenith in Agamben's multiple comparisons between the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s and today's political situation. Rulers have started to rule like the Führer once did. Government committees once again determine which news is true and which is fake. Just as Eichmann obeyed Kantian morals in acting according to his conscience, so we are tempted today to renounce the good (e.g., personal interactions) in order to save the good (physical health). Agreeing to teach online is the "exact equivalent" of pledging allegiance to the fascist regime (74). In fact, Agamben is convinced that the new despotism will be worse than the totalitarianisms we have known so far. The control we now face through cameras and cellphones "exceeds by far any form of control exercised under totalitarian regimes such as Fascism or Nazism" (43).
Thought with Deep Roots
Agamben is hardly a crackpot, trying to shock bourgeois sensibilities for the sake of shocking them. As a renowned philosopher, his musings on the epidemic have roots that run deep. This book does not display the root system in detail; it is a collection of journalistic, short essays and interviews published between February and November 2020. But for those in the know, throughout the book, Agamben's philosophical and political convictions, developed over a long career of writing and teaching, are on display.
Essentially, the book applies to the current political and social crisis insights Agamben developed at length in earlier works—books such as Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995) and State of Exception (2004). Agamben has thought long and deeply about how a "state of exception" has threatened to undermine democracy throughout the twentieth century. He has developed his notions of "biopolitics" and "biosecurity" through detailed dialogue with postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault. Both his apprehension of digital technology as removing physical presence from human relationships and his discussions of fear and anxiety build upon his many years of appropriating the phenomenological thought of Martin Heidegger.
Put differently, Agamben knows what he is doing in this book. We may think that his analysis of the situation is good for a laugh, but I would suggest the joke may be on us. Agamben's observations, rooted in existentialist and postmodern philosophical thought, deserve to be discussed with utter seriousness. The knee-jerk reaction to the epidemic has been a nearly universal, fearful concession of political power to health authorities and a serf-like compliance with political overreach, in terms of religious freedoms, freedom of expression (think of the massive YouTube and Twitter censorship currently underway), freedom of movement, and—needless to say—vaccine mandates, which have caused immense suffering for tens of thousands of noncompliant employees.
A Giant Makeover
Writing in April 2020, Agamben talks of the near-abolition of the traditional separation-of-powers as the demise of democracy:
Never before, not even under Fascism and during the two world wars, has the limitation of freedom been taken to such extremes; people have been confined to their houses and, deprived of all social relationships, reduced to a condition of biological survival. This barbarity does not even spare the dead: those who die are being deprived of their right to a funeral, their bodies instead burned. (38–39)
Hans Boersma is the Saint Benedict Servants of Christ Professor in Ascetical Theology at Nashotah House Theological Seminary.
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