Agamben WTF, or How Philosophy Failed the Pandemic (original) (raw)

2021, Verso Blog

Benjamin Bratton on why philosophy failed us in facing up to the pandemic, and why we need to rethink biopolitics as a matter of life and death. As yet another wave of infection blooms and the bitter assignment of vaccine passes becomes a reality, societies are being held hostage by a sadly familiar coalition of the uninformed, the misinformed, the misguided, and the misanthropic. They are making vaccine passports, which no one wants, a likely necessity. Without their noise and narcissism, vaccination rates would be high enough that the passes would not be needed. But it is not simply the "rabble" who make this sad mess, but also some voices from the upper echelons of the academy. During the pandemic, when society desperately needed to make sense of the big picture, Philosophy failed the moment, sometimes through ignorance or incoherence, sometimes outright intellectual fraud. The lesson of Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, in part tells us why. Famous for critiques of "biopolitics" that have helped to shape the Humanities' perspectives on biology, society, science and politics, Agamben spent the pandemic publishing over a dozen editorials denouncing the situation in ways that closely parallel right-wing (and leftwing) conspiracy theories.