Their critique of the state during pandemics is ignorant of the necessity of it to save lives during pandemics

There is no doubt that we are living in a glaring example of the exercise of biopower. It is also clear that we are following the rules imposed by the health emergency that has legitimized the state of exception. And unfortunately, it is true that some small-time dictators, such as Orbán in Hungary, will exploit the situation. But the historical and political differences must also echo and stand out in philosophical reflections! If we cannot yet read the novelty in front of us, we must proceed carefully, not hold on blindly to a hermeneutic apriori!

Let’s remember that Michel Foucault, at the end of the 1970s, theorized the emergence of a new form of modern political power, in which sovereign power, the life sciences, medical knowledge, and disciplinary practices all join forces, in the name of a defense of society and the protection of life, for total and diffuse control of the population. We know, however, the specter that haunted Foucault: a power, masquerading as a guardian of health and the people, acted in ways that are both discriminating — decreeing which lives were unworthy of protection — and “normalizing” — governing the spaces of freedom of the lives deemed worthy of that protection. In other words, the ghost of totalitarianism still troubles Foucault when he thematizes biopower. Indeed, he sees biopower becoming the pivot around which every form of state racism, from Nazism to Stalinism, revolves.

Is this what we are experiencing today? Agamben and his followers believe it is, although they do not admit it explicitly. To simplify a more nuanced reasoning, their thesis goes something like this: the Italian government, with the support of the so-called experts in viruses and contagion, declare a pandemic, and this state of affairs legitimizes, intensifies, and makes permanent the state of exception that allows state power to discriminate and to enforce conformity at the same time. In this reading, we could argue, Pandemia would realize what its etymology implies, (pan/all – dēmos/ people) “to make the people One”!

There is no doubt that the lockdown restricts our spaces of freedom; there is no doubt that each emergency situation might become an occasion for the arbitrary exertion of power, whose end time is unpredictable; there is no doubt that introducing new devices that track people’s movements is dangerous; there is also no doubt that “strong powers,” financial capital especially, are taking advantage of the situation and maneuvering markets, prices, and the distribution of necessary goods. But “today” these Foucauldian/Deleuzian readings draw the new back to the old, so to speak. They shield the novelty of what is happening. Indeed, they are guided by the idea that the real danger is still only the possibility of totalitarianism.

What we see from the Po Valley, even those who read and love Foucault, and read and love some works of Agamben, is instead an unprecedented pandemic that threatens to unleash literally a pandemonium. That is to say, a struggle among devils, to stay within Milton’s literary universe, who are far from settling on a total system. Instead, they keep on fighting dangerously with one another.

We can already see this taking shape. Europe is in chaos, proceeding in a scattered, blind, and selfish way. The central government is arguing with local, regional, or federal powers. Heads of state stand corrected and accused by medical experts, on the one side, and are pressured by financial powers, on the other side. Big corporations and industries are fighting against unions, rejecting the predictions of epidemiologists about the swift spread of the virus. Hospitals are struggling with the power of regions, of bureaucracy, of corporations, and of the state, to receive in reasonable time indispensable devices and materials. And then there is us, scared by the realization, after denial and rage, that this is no normal flu.

It is true that most of us are asking all these powers to protect our health and our lives. Most of us, however, are not following the rules just because we cherish the voluntary servitude of the obedience/protection exchange; not just because we let ourselves be governed and disciplined; but because we think that social distancing and isolation are today the only possible version of solidarity and recognition of our interdependence. They are the only possible way not so much to save ourselves, but avoid bringing harm to others.