contrary, Agamben explains that the birth of the modern perspective on
power is located precisely in the separation between two paradigms and
the subsequent autonomy of one over the other: political theology and >economic theology. In the first, God’s will is the origin of sovereign
power; that is, where the divine plan of salvation resides in the >Judeo-Christian culture. In the second, both God’s and human life are >manageable matter: objects of an economy of life administered by experts
and authorities authorized to resolve human vicissitudes.[33] In God’s >figure, political theology found the symbol of sovereign power, and
economic theology substitutes the said transcendence with the idea of an >oikonomia conceived as an immanent order.[34] The contemporary political >crisis, the one that has led to the creation of this gigantic
concentration camp, exacerbated by COVID-19, would be based on the fact
that political theology has lost almost all ground to economic theology,
a field of power that acquires independence and that does not need to be >justified in the will of God, that is in, authentic and transcendent
power, to rule. In this fracture between God and his praxis, Agamben >identifies the emergence of the “western governmental machine,” a
bipolar machine that separates God’s omnipotence from the world’s
rational government, that is, absolute power, from its worldly exercise.
To better explain the above, Agamben analyzes the motto of
constitutional monarchies with which kingdom and government differ, thus >graphically describing his finding of the fracture of God: in the same
way that “the king reigns, but does not rule,” God reigns, but does not
rule in modern societies of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Economic
theology gains greater independence as the field of government is
abrogated, sustaining its exclusivity overall “that which God cannot
do,” that field between the challenges of day-to-day human life and the >mystery of divine truth, “becomes in the paradigm of the distinction
between power and its exercise, between kingdom and government.”[35]
This division presents us with a powerless God before his creation since
“he can only act through the natural order that he has established.”[36]
He can do everything, but he cannot do anything that is not an automatic >response to his wisdom and to the logic of the order that he has
established. A God powerless in the face of the daily demands of his
creature since his logic does not belong to the world of the contingent
but of the transcendent. For its part, in the human world, changing and >unpredictable, everything is manageable from the understanding between >humans; that is why this is a world that fits the possibility of
government. Through a journey between primitive and medieval Christian
texts, Agamben argues that modern government is present to administer
the intermediate space between the particular and unpredictable events
of men and the general providence or absolute power of God. The
decisions of the men who govern that terrain will tend to apply general >providence to the situations they live, making a calculation, ultimately
an interpretation, of their decisions regarding the unknown plan of >salvation. In Agamben’s words, the first rulers of modern oikonomy
“would assume an idea of an order founded on the contingent play of
immanent effects.”[37]
This distinction between the divine, inaccessible, and incomprehensible
realm and human government may find an application in the case of the >coronavirus crisis. The truth about the origin and ultimate solution to
the pandemic seems to escape our frame of thought. Beyond the hope of a >vaccine, comprehensive knowledge about the COVID-19 phenomenon seems to
be sheltered in a place that is alien to us, before which we have left
only the interpretations and improvisations of human management. For
this reason, Jean-Luc Nancy’s criticism of Agamben, in which he replies
to the Italian philosopher that the experience we are living is a “viral >exception and not a political–legal exception.”[38] Nancy’s
differentiation reflects the duality between earthly management and the >mysterious core of power that Agamben describes in Il regno e la gloria.
In the distinction made by Nancy in his question to Agamben, a current >application of the difference between kingdom and government is
installing itself, a reflection of our natural inability to access the
origin of the problem, in such a way that we seek for the unknown,
stratagems and euphemisms such as that of the “viral exception,” behind
which we hide our impotence in the face of a problem that surpasses us
in understanding and control. It is certainly not truly clear what Nancy >means by a “viral exception” and how it differs from a political–legal >exception. What is clear is that, since we are not, as humanity, capable
of accessing a transcendent power to handle the problem of COVID-19 with
that power’s full knowledge, we use restrictions on liberties like the
exact measures of the imperfect world of government that we have built.
Only that explains the response to the crisis through quarantines and >impositions of authority that have not changed focus since the pest
control we did centuries ago, for example, to the Spanish flu. To this
same economic management of life belong, in fact, categories such as
Nancy’s, related to a supposed “viral exception,” since with them an
attempt is made to provide a mysterious legitimacy to the old and
precious political–legal shackles of the West. In summary, if the state
of exception in which we live has been based on the management of >calculations and interpretations of a transcendent power that is
inaccessible to us, then the contingent games of immanent effects that
we create around emergencies such as COVID-19, and not only in it,[39] >deserve questioning.
4 Promises of glorification
The Agambenian genealogy takes an unexpected and provocative turn when,
in the second part of The Kingdom and the Glory, the Italian philosopher
asks himself about the bureaucratic circle closest to the power of God;
the Angels. He wonders: what happens to them and their functional >specialization when doomsday arrives? The question is posed to the >theological tradition. However, the answer is found in the Heideggerian >ontology: according to Agamben, the angels who, in principle, would not >fulfill more functions than to satisfy the demands of humanity, would
remain limited to performing their most essential function. That is:
glorify God, keeping him isolated for his glory. What a paradox that
Agamben discovers; not even a hypothetical day of judgment would break
the logic of the government machine’s bipolarity by revealing the
absolute power of God. This paradox has implications in the current >coronavirus crisis and in the proposals for an alternate world to be >built.[40] With a hypothetical end of the world, the place of absolute
power would continue to be isolated by its splendor and by the acclaim
that the angels would do around and about it. From an imperfect
humankind point of view, this separation from the core-power would
reveal that pure power ever is, in essence, an empty place, a nothing
that to “be power” needs the glorification of the angels at the end of
the world, such as his earthly stewards did during normal times. Glory
is, consequently for Agamben, the essence of the concept of the
political that affects the supreme power of God in a different way than
what it can do over men since it contains a correlation: on the one
hand, God depends on the glory and glory of God and, on the other hand,
glory becomes glory only through glorification. That is to say, the only
sure thing, consequently, is that the human power resides in those who
can glorify the sacred and mysterious nucleus. In other words, Agamben >identifies that the power of the western governmental machine, the one
that has acquired current absolute dominance over social and individual
life, is sustained by the constant ovation and acclaim of men themselves
in order for it to exist.[41] In summary, the purest elemental power is
an empty nucleus surrounded by the veil of Glory. That veil, on the one
hand, glorifies it; that is, it elevates Glory to the place of absolute
power and, on the other hand, hides such pure power from humanity under
a halo of mystery. Agamben transfers this theological metaphor to the
level of the individual. The humankind without politics is like that
God, in essence, innocuous and isolated, described by Agamben as a being
at rest, immobile and oblivious to the tasks of government, his life
acquires a meaning when he is surrounded by Glory, at the same time that
it becomes his condemnation: he leads him to pursue, through politics, >utopias that, as such, are inaccessible; like promises about a kingdom
that, written with strokes of glorification, mark our political
identities with their indelible stamp.
For Agamben, the inaction of Glory brings together what we call
politics: it surrounds the simplicity of the human species, its natural >condition of lack of identity is overcome thanks to it. Politics
understood as Glory provides us with a purpose that, although it is
devoid of divine purity, justifies the absolute control over life as,
after all, our purpose. It could be said that theology and politics live
in the prelude to an “empty throne.” To build that anteroom full of >government mechanisms while simultaneously glorifying the inaccessible
sacred is the purpose of modern politics.
In conclusion, Glory as inaction unites the sacred and the profane gives
rise to the political as a meaning imposed on biological life. At
present, in Western culture the hegemonic power of Glory is expressed,
for example, in what we know under the name of “public opinion,” which
is constructed by the media, the social networks, and, in general, by
the mass media. The force of this public opinion hides an empty center
of truth that, despite its emptiness, rules over dissenting positions:
it does not possess pure truths and, nevertheless, its inertia affects
all political positions, even the best-supported ones, in such a way
that consistently tend to conform to it as a paradigm of “politically >correct.” The politicians’ or governmental agencies’ extreme sensitivity
to public opinion leads them to approach these views as more pressing
and deserving of justice.
Agamben questions the “pseudoscientific” claims of the approaches that
try to name, explain, and deify Glory. On the one hand, he questions >Habermas, who proposes certain idolatry in the search for consensus as
an “achieved utopia” of institutional channeling of sovereignty.[42] >According to Habermas, the public sphere and deliberation refer to the
pole of government. However, for Agamben, this is only one of the modern >forms that the old glorifying acclaim of modern oikonomy acquires. On
the other hand, he questions the power of the decision legitimized by a >“cheering people” that Schmitt exalts as sovereign in Constitutional
Theory; the acclamation of the demos around the ruler is just the other
pole of glorification, according to Agamben. [43] Both Habermas and
Schmitt try to impose a statute of logic and divinity on what, for
Agamben, is an inaccessible substance. Deliberation and decision are
nothing more than liturgical spectacles, two euphemistic artifacts
created by man to explain what has no explanation; to place in the place
of the “empty throne” that we described before, a role of authority that
does not belong to them and to present them as the “discovered” origins
of the power of governments. The truth, according to Agamben, is that
the origin of a general acceptance of laws that, for example, define the
life or death of thousands of people is unknown; what makes such a law
an obligation accepted by the citizenry does not arise from debate or
prior deliberation or from the simple fact of deciding. Deliberation and >decision are parts of an economy of power that do not constitute
transcendent sovereign power since there is nothing so rational and >indisputable within a decision or deliberation that can explain the
general acceptance of orders that define who lives and who does not.
Slavoj Žižek’s proposal regarding a humanistic emergence from which
“true communism” would result does not stop attracting attention; in
some way, it would adjust to one of the possible answers Agamben
analyzes about the hypothetical apocalyptic situation. We should ask
Žižek more than Agamben if the proposal of a “post-covid communism”[44]
is not another accommodation of modern oikonomia to maintain the
original divide between kingdom and government? Wouldn’t this new
communism be another form of glorification?
It is possible to find ourselves in front of another “mirage of
divinity,” another earthly “performance” such as that of Habermarsian >deliberation and Schmittian decisionism. It must be said that Agamben
does not offer an alternative to lockdowns and quarantines, beyond >criticizing the coercive response and warning of the totalitarian risk
that the crisis and the state of emergency is generating. It is not
clear that there really is an alternative proposed by Agamben to handle
the pandemic without it being also a biopolitical response. The
so-called herd immunity strategy, for example, or the actions that seek
to save the economy are also responses coming from the government
regarding people’s lives. Agamben’s argument does not suppose a miracle >solution with regard to the public management of COVID-19, it is simply
a warning that governments are taking advantage of the state of
exception to replace constitutional rights and to self-abrogate an
authority that goes beyond what is allowed by law.
5 Conclusion
When Agamben indicates that States’ response to COVID-19 is
disproportionate, he does so from an understanding and from genealogical >knowledge of the processes of government; it is not resulting from a >conspiracy theorist-paranoid or irrational approach. From that
perspective, governments’ authoritarian attributions are only the most
recent radicalization of the forms of absolute domination over social
life that has characterized Western culture since its origins.
For Agamben, modern biopolitics is expressed in the crisis of how
COVID-19 reinforces a status of obligational? Control over human life >grounded on in-determinacy and un-founded power. This indeterminacy of
the “place” and foundation of power is more aggressive concerning the
control that can be exercised, for example, in concrete forms of
government such as “totalitarianism” or “dictatorship.” The state of >exception that we experience is presented as a “threshold of
indeterminacy between democracy and absolutism,”[45] as Agamben has
proposed for decades. The West, according to Agamben, has built a state
of exception that “is not a dictatorship, but a vacuum space of law.
That is a zone of anomie in which all legal determinations are >deactivating.”[46] As a result of perverse and “intimate solidarity
between democracy and totalitarianism.”[47] So, the state of exception >generated by COVID-19 is just the continuity of that order.
Agamben has been wrong on one point: COVID-19 is not a regular flu: it
has been the “most important of all the flus” that he has been able to >witness since he began his research program in 1996. For better or
worse, COVID-19 has allowed the materializing for his critics to see “in >vivo” the meaning of his extensive and abstract work on the permanent
state of exception. Perhaps the harsh reality that forces us to
experience biopolitical decisions first-hand today allows us to
understand why the world, according to Agamben, has become a “place
where the state of exception perfectly coincides with the rule and where
the extreme situation becomes the very paradigm of everyday life.” In
other words, it allows us to see how and why the world is transforming
into a gigantic concentration camp.
overcomes, onof the world; the economy is applied as an internal articulation that >favors its praxis. Due to the internal connection that the three
elements that compose it are unity and, at the same time, plurality of >actions; here, the economy not only acts as a metaphor, of the modern >separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial powers – as >Foucault indicated – but they constitute – according to Agamben – its >historical origin since it took place first in theology and later in >politics.[31] In summary, through an analysis of theological treatises, >which are in themselves an invaluable finding,[32] Agamben
was atthe one hand, the causal link between theology and politics and, on the >other hand, questions the overvalued secularization of present
theological concepts, for example, those of Carl Schmitt. For Agamben, >theology is at the base of politics in the same way that politics
thethe base of theology from its origins. The problematic issue has been
that the bureaucratic apparatus of “domestic administrators,” those who >today issue movement restriction orders, for example, has evolved to
expertscurrent forms of absolute control over a social life, without the >substance or foundation of those measures coming from absolute power.
Although Agamben refers to ancient theological texts, he argues that
these texts have implications for understanding the current political >decline, the tendency to authoritarianism, and the crisis of liberal >democracies. He considers that the contemporary era is characterized by >the total triumph of life’s economic government in all its dimensions. >With his genealogy, Agamben shows that life’s objectification as an >administrable good has not always been the prevailing paradigm. On the >contrary, Agamben explains that the birth of the modern perspective on >power is located precisely in the separation between two paradigms and
the subsequent autonomy of one over the other: political theology and >economic theology. In the first, God’s will is the origin of sovereign >power; that is, where the divine plan of salvation resides in the >Judeo-Christian culture. In the second, both God’s and human life are >manageable matter: objects of an economy of life administered by
of anand authorities authorized to resolve human vicissitudes.[33] In God’s >figure, political theology found the symbol of sovereign power, and >economic theology substitutes the said transcendence with the idea
politicaloikonomia conceived as an immanent order.[34] The contemporary
theology,crisis, the one that has led to the creation of this gigantic >concentration camp, exacerbated by COVID-19, would be based on the fact >that political theology has lost almost all ground to economic
to bea field of power that acquires independence and that does not need
exercise.justified in the will of God, that is in, authentic and transcendent >power, to rule. In this fracture between God and his praxis, Agamben >identifies the emergence of the “western governmental machine,” a >bipolar machine that separates God’s omnipotence from the world’s >rational government, that is, absolute power, from its worldly
thusTo better explain the above, Agamben analyzes the motto of
constitutional monarchies with which kingdom and government differ,
sincegraphically describing his finding of the fracture of God: in the same
way that “the king reigns, but does not rule,” God reigns, but does not >rule in modern societies of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Economic >theology gains greater independence as the field of government is >abrogated, sustaining its exclusivity overall “that which God cannot >do,” that field between the challenges of day-to-day human life and the >mystery of divine truth, “becomes in the paradigm of the distinction >between power and its exercise, between kingdom and government.”[35]
This division presents us with a powerless God before his creation
established.”[36]“he can only act through the natural order that he has
automaticHe can do everything, but he cannot do anything that is not an
ultimatelyresponse to his wisdom and to the logic of the order that he has >established. A God powerless in the face of the daily demands of his >creature since his logic does not belong to the world of the contingent >but of the transcendent. For its part, in the human world, changing and >unpredictable, everything is manageable from the understanding between >humans; that is why this is a world that fits the possibility of >government. Through a journey between primitive and medieval Christian >texts, Agamben argues that modern government is present to administer
the intermediate space between the particular and unpredictable events
of men and the general providence or absolute power of God. The
decisions of the men who govern that terrain will tend to apply general >providence to the situations they live, making a calculation,
“viralan interpretation, of their decisions regarding the unknown plan of >salvation. In Agamben’s words, the first rulers of modern oikonomy >“would assume an idea of an order founded on the contingent play of >immanent effects.”[37]
This distinction between the divine, inaccessible, and incomprehensible >realm and human government may find an application in the case of the >coronavirus crisis. The truth about the origin and ultimate solution to >the pandemic seems to escape our frame of thought. Beyond the hope of a >vaccine, comprehensive knowledge about the COVID-19 phenomenon seems to
be sheltered in a place that is alien to us, before which we have left >only the interpretations and improvisations of human management. For
this reason, Jean-Luc Nancy’s criticism of Agamben, in which he replies >to the Italian philosopher that the experience we are living is a
gloria.exception and not a political–legal exception.”[38] Nancy’s >differentiation reflects the duality between earthly management and the >mysterious core of power that Agamben describes in Il regno e la
NancyIn the distinction made by Nancy in his question to Agamben, a current >application of the difference between kingdom and government is
installing itself, a reflection of our natural inability to access the >origin of the problem, in such a way that we seek for the unknown, >stratagems and euphemisms such as that of the “viral exception,” behind >which we hide our impotence in the face of a problem that surpasses us
in understanding and control. It is certainly not truly clear what
capablemeans by a “viral exception” and how it differs from a political–legal
exception. What is clear is that, since we are not, as humanity,
withof accessing a transcendent power to handle the problem of COVID-19
philosopherthat power’s full knowledge, we use restrictions on liberties like the >exact measures of the imperfect world of government that we have built. >Only that explains the response to the crisis through quarantines and >impositions of authority that have not changed focus since the pest >control we did centuries ago, for example, to the Spanish flu. To this >same economic management of life belong, in fact, categories such as >Nancy’s, related to a supposed “viral exception,” since with them an >attempt is made to provide a mysterious legitimacy to the old and
precious political–legal shackles of the West. In summary, if the state >of exception in which we live has been based on the management of >calculations and interpretations of a transcendent power that is >inaccessible to us, then the contingent games of immanent effects that
we create around emergencies such as COVID-19, and not only in it,[39] >deserve questioning.
4 Promises of glorification
The Agambenian genealogy takes an unexpected and provocative turn when,
in the second part of The Kingdom and the Glory, the Italian
onlyasks himself about the bureaucratic circle closest to the power of God; >the Angels. He wonders: what happens to them and their functional >specialization when doomsday arrives? The question is posed to the >theological tradition. However, the answer is found in the Heideggerian >ontology: according to Agamben, the angels who, in principle, would not >fulfill more functions than to satisfy the demands of humanity, would >remain limited to performing their most essential function. That is: >glorify God, keeping him isolated for his glory. What a paradox that >Agamben discovers; not even a hypothetical day of judgment would break
the logic of the government machine’s bipolarity by revealing the >absolute power of God. This paradox has implications in the current >coronavirus crisis and in the proposals for an alternate world to be >built.[40] With a hypothetical end of the world, the place of absolute >power would continue to be isolated by its splendor and by the acclaim >that the angels would do around and about it. From an imperfect
humankind point of view, this separation from the core-power would
reveal that pure power ever is, in essence, an empty place, a nothing
that to “be power” needs the glorification of the angels at the end of >the world, such as his earthly stewards did during normal times. Glory
is, consequently for Agamben, the essence of the concept of the
political that affects the supreme power of God in a different way than >what it can do over men since it contains a correlation: on the one
hand, God depends on the glory and glory of God and, on the other hand, >glory becomes glory only through glorification. That is to say, the
themselvessure thing, consequently, is that the human power resides in those who
can glorify the sacred and mysterious nucleus. In other words, Agamben >identifies that the power of the western governmental machine, the one >that has acquired current absolute dominance over social and individual >life, is sustained by the constant ovation and acclaim of men
beingin order for it to exist.[41] In summary, the purest elemental power is
an empty nucleus surrounded by the veil of Glory. That veil, on the one >hand, glorifies it; that is, it elevates Glory to the place of absolute >power and, on the other hand, hides such pure power from humanity under
a halo of mystery. Agamben transfers this theological metaphor to the >level of the individual. The humankind without politics is like that
God, in essence, innocuous and isolated, described by Agamben as a
thatat rest, immobile and oblivious to the tasks of government, his life >acquires a meaning when he is surrounded by Glory, at the same time
liveit becomes his condemnation: he leads him to pursue, through politics, >utopias that, as such, are inaccessible; like promises about a kingdom >that, written with strokes of glorification, mark our political
identities with their indelible stamp.
For Agamben, the inaction of Glory brings together what we call
politics: it surrounds the simplicity of the human species, its natural >condition of lack of identity is overcome thanks to it. Politics >understood as Glory provides us with a purpose that, although it is
devoid of divine purity, justifies the absolute control over life as, >after all, our purpose. It could be said that theology and politics
givesin the prelude to an “empty throne.” To build that anteroom full of >government mechanisms while simultaneously glorifying the inaccessible >sacred is the purpose of modern politics.
In conclusion, Glory as inaction unites the sacred and the profane
sensitivityrise to the political as a meaning imposed on biological life. At
present, in Western culture the hegemonic power of Glory is expressed,
for example, in what we know under the name of “public opinion,” which >is constructed by the media, the social networks, and, in general, by
the mass media. The force of this public opinion hides an empty center
of truth that, despite its emptiness, rules over dissenting positions:
it does not possess pure truths and, nevertheless, its inertia affects
all political positions, even the best-supported ones, in such a way
that consistently tend to conform to it as a paradigm of “politically >correct.” The politicians’ or governmental agencies’ extreme
modernto public opinion leads them to approach these views as more pressing
and deserving of justice.
Agamben questions the “pseudoscientific” claims of the approaches that >try to name, explain, and deify Glory. On the one hand, he questions >Habermas, who proposes certain idolatry in the search for consensus as
an “achieved utopia” of institutional channeling of sovereignty.[42] >According to Habermas, the public sphere and deliberation refer to the >pole of government. However, for Agamben, this is only one of the
placeforms that the old glorifying acclaim of modern oikonomy acquires. On
the other hand, he questions the power of the decision legitimized by a >“cheering people” that Schmitt exalts as sovereign in Constitutional >Theory; the acclamation of the demos around the ruler is just the other >pole of glorification, according to Agamben. [43] Both Habermas and >Schmitt try to impose a statute of logic and divinity on what, for >Agamben, is an inaccessible substance. Deliberation and decision are >nothing more than liturgical spectacles, two euphemistic artifacts
created by man to explain what has no explanation; to place in the
thatof the “empty throne” that we described before, a role of authority
thedoes not belong to them and to present them as the “discovered” origins >of the power of governments. The truth, according to Agamben, is that
the origin of a general acceptance of laws that, for example, define
andlife or death of thousands of people is unknown; what makes such a law
an obligation accepted by the citizenry does not arise from debate or >prior deliberation or from the simple fact of deciding. Deliberation
genealogicaldecision are parts of an economy of power that do not constitute >transcendent sovereign power since there is nothing so rational and >indisputable within a decision or deliberation that can explain the >general acceptance of orders that define who lives and who does not.
Slavoj Žižek’s proposal regarding a humanistic emergence from which >“true communism” would result does not stop attracting attention; in >some way, it would adjust to one of the possible answers Agamben
analyzes about the hypothetical apocalyptic situation. We should ask >Žižek more than Agamben if the proposal of a “post-covid communism”[44]
is not another accommodation of modern oikonomia to maintain the
original divide between kingdom and government? Wouldn’t this new >communism be another form of glorification?
It is possible to find ourselves in front of another “mirage of >divinity,” another earthly “performance” such as that of Habermarsian >deliberation and Schmittian decisionism. It must be said that Agamben
does not offer an alternative to lockdowns and quarantines, beyond >criticizing the coercive response and warning of the totalitarian risk >that the crisis and the state of emergency is generating. It is not
clear that there really is an alternative proposed by Agamben to handle >the pandemic without it being also a biopolitical response. The
so-called herd immunity strategy, for example, or the actions that seek
to save the economy are also responses coming from the government >regarding people’s lives. Agamben’s argument does not suppose a miracle >solution with regard to the public management of COVID-19, it is simply
a warning that governments are taking advantage of the state of
exception to replace constitutional rights and to self-abrogate an >authority that goes beyond what is allowed by law.
5 Conclusion
When Agamben indicates that States’ response to COVID-19 is >disproportionate, he does so from an understanding and from
“inknowledge of the processes of government; it is not resulting from a >conspiracy theorist-paranoid or irrational approach. From that >perspective, governments’ authoritarian attributions are only the most >recent radicalization of the forms of absolute domination over social
life that has characterized Western culture since its origins.
For Agamben, modern biopolitics is expressed in the crisis of how
COVID-19 reinforces a status of obligational? Control over human life >grounded on in-determinacy and un-founded power. This indeterminacy of
the “place” and foundation of power is more aggressive concerning the >control that can be exercised, for example, in concrete forms of >government such as “totalitarianism” or “dictatorship.” The state of
exception that we experience is presented as a “threshold of >indeterminacy between democracy and absolutism,”[45] as Agamben has >proposed for decades. The West, according to Agamben, has built a state
of exception that “is not a dictatorship, but a vacuum space of law. >That is a zone of anomie in which all legal determinations are >deactivating.”[46] As a result of perverse and “intimate solidarity >between democracy and totalitarianism.”[47] So, the state of exception >generated by COVID-19 is just the continuity of that order.
Agamben has been wrong on one point: COVID-19 is not a regular flu: it
has been the “most important of all the flus” that he has been able to >witness since he began his research program in 1996. For better or
worse, COVID-19 has allowed the materializing for his critics to see
wherevivo” the meaning of his extensive and abstract work on the permanent >state of exception. Perhaps the harsh reality that forces us to
experience biopolitical decisions first-hand today allows us to
understand why the world, according to Agamben, has become a “place >where the state of exception perfectly coincides with the rule and
I am wonderfully hungry!the extreme situation becomes the very paradigm of everyday life.” In >other words, it allows us to see how and why the world is transforming >into a gigantic concentration camp.The only *healthy* way to stop the pandemic, thereby saving lives, in
U.S. & elsewhere is by rapidly ( http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19 )
finding out at any given moment, including even while on-line, who
among us are unwittingly contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or
asymptomatic) in order to http://bit.ly/convince_it_forward (John
15:12) for them to call their doctor and self-quarantine per their
doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic. Thus, we're hoping for the
best while preparing for the worse-case scenario of the Alpha lineage mutations and others like the Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota, Lambda, Mu &
Delta lineage mutations combining to form hybrids that render current
COVID vaccines/pills no longer effective.
Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry ( http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19 )
and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.
So how are you ? '
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 296 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 54:17:51 |
| Calls: | 6,650 |
| Calls today: | 2 |
| Files: | 12,200 |
| Messages: | 5,330,613 |