Foucault under Quarantine: coronavirus viewed from “The Left”

A pandemic is a time-freeze, a broad reflection on what is happening in the world. Having found themselves in an unusual regime of lockdown and restriction, most philosophers on a variety of political flanks - from conservatives to leftists and liberals - have referred in one way or another to the famous French philosopher Michel Foucault, who described the disciplinary mechanisms of power, biopolitics and the regulation of private life of the "global biomass".

Let us consider the opinions of some current philosophers on the leftist and the liberal spectrum and see what insights and mistakes they have made in their assessments. 

Giorgio Agamben

The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, who synthesized "left" and "right" elements in his system and criticized liberalism, got strict quarantine measures defensive. 

He has applied his term "bare life" to the current coronavirus situation. In his philosophy, the term refers to the animal part of the human, the involuntary biomass, which remains in the toughest, most critical situations, when those mechanisms that contribute to survival and the provision of physiological needs matter. 

He has previously cited the Nazi camps of the 20th century as an example, and more modern - the tightening of control (at the legislative and international level) after the 9/11 attacks.

In recent publications, he notes that the problem is not the pandemic itself, but its ethical and political implications.

"Our society no longer believes in anything but bare life", he comments, criticizing Italians for their willingness to sacrifice work, friendship, values and beliefs for hygiene. In his opinion, in this situation, people's life has been reduced to a purely biological state. 

In his opinion, quarantine measures only divide people. “Bare life — and the danger of losing it — is not something that unites people, but blinds and separates them.”

One of the most terrible consequences of a pandemic, Agamben believes, is the establishment of a state of exception, when the temporarily introduced emergency regime under the pretext of a virus or other emergency event is extended for an indefinite period, and eventually becomes an integral part of the relationship between the state and the population - that is, with constant control and supervision. Society, according to Agamben, for security reasons, condemns itself to life in an eternal state of fear and insecurity, eventually getting used to it.

 “It is, in reality, a civil war. The enemy is not outside, it is within us”, the philosopher writes.

In addition, he fears the gradual transfer of life to the virtual realm - universities, work and other activities on the Internet will replace live communication, which could exclude open debates on political or cultural topics. In fact, this is how a machine-state appears, replacing humans at the center of society.

Thus, concludes Agamben with reference to Foucault, with strict measures to curb the coronavirus, there is a tendency to use an exceptional position as a normal power paradigm - creating heavy restrictions on freedoms and human rights. 

Jean-Luc Nancy 

The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, author of the idea of the être-en-commun, reacted critically to Agamben's thoughts about the coronavirus. He notes that Covid-19 is not a common flu, and there is at least no vaccine against it, and that people do die.

 “Governments are nothing more than grim executioners, and taking it out on them seems more like a diversionary manoeuvre than a political reflection”, Nancy argues.

He also drew attention to the fact that much of what in the past was considered exceptional has already gradually entered our daily lives.

Nancy discusses the coronavirus' connection to the global world. The Coronavirus pandemic at all levels is a product of globalization, he stresses - it is a combative and effective free-trade agent, and the whole process calls into question the model of current economic development - including in France.

Slavoj Zizek 

Of course, the famous Slovene left-wing philosopher Slavoj Zizek also reacted to the coronavirus. In his book "Pandemic! Covid-19 shakes the world", he is not so much asking questions about conspiracy or the origin of the virus as he is rethinking the world.

 “Perhaps, one can hope that one of the unintended consequences of the coronavirus quarantines in cities around the world will be that some people at least will use their time released from hectic activity and think about the (non)sense of their predicament.”

He questions Agamben's approach and, more generally, Foucault's discourse of observation and control alone - he is more interested in the effectiveness of measures and their consequences for the world's economic order.

His main pragmatic question is - Will we learn anything from it?

On the one hand, he believes that if there are no deep changes, the pandemic will only worsen the current capitalist regime: “Hegel wrote that the only thing we can learn from history is that we learn nothing from history, so I doubt the epidemic will make us any wiser.” The virus will destroy the very foundations of our lives, causing not only death, but also economic chaos.

But on the other hand, Zizek hopes that if we stop panicking and turn to reflection, it may serve as the beginning of a new model of "communism".

In his vision, the virus has undoubtedly exposed the weak points of the capitalist system, from the lack of goods and the absence of ventilators, to the fragility of the system with impending unemployment and crisis. Market mechanisms are clearly insufficient to prevent chaos and famine in an emergency situation. For Europe in general, he predicts a perfect storm where three crisis moments - pandemic, economic deadlock and migration crisis - have converged. 

There is a paradox in capitalist society: the more connected our world is, the stronger a local catastrophe can provoke global panic and disaster.

At the same time, he criticizes "authoritarianism", "fascism" and populists in the usual tones, pointing to the leadership of China, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, etc., although he admits that in critical conditions, military discipline becomes necessary. In the scope of his criticism, he denies the effectiveness of measures to isolate countries, build new walls and push further quarantine measures.

Zizek proposes a non-capitalist but essentially globalist project. It presumes the same global organization of the world in the control and regulation of the economy, as well as limiting the sovereignty of nation-states when necessary. In general, he believes that “the coronavirus will also compel us to re-invent Communism based on trust in the people and in science.”

For this, continues the Slovenian philosopher, the almost impossible is necessary: strengthening the unity of Europe, especially the cooperation between France and Germany. However, he does not explain exactly how his global communism would work, which is a rather serious problem.

Roberto Esposito

Another Italian philosopher who has written a lot about biopolitics is Roberto Esposito. In his assessment, it is an exaggeration to talk about the risks to democracy in this case. He believes that the link between politics and biological control has been established long ago, and that there is nothing new here. The medicalization of politics is already a fact, as is the politicization of medicine.

 “From the intervention of biotechnology on domains that were once considered exclusively natural, like birth and death, to bioterrorism, the management of immigration and more or less serious epidemics, all political conflicts today have the relation between politics and biological life at their core.”

He also proposes to separate Foucault's discourse from the current specific situation. In his vision, the situation of tough measures against the Coronavirus, especially in Italy, does not speak of a totalitarian seizure of power, but rather, given the complete confusion before the epidemic, demonstrates the collapse of the current state authorities.

French globalists: Bernard Henri Levy and Jacques Attali

For a more complete picture, let us look to the opinions of openly globalist liberal ideologists, who for many years advised presidents and influenced the events in the Middle East via Western state intervention.

Bernard Henri Levy comments rather flatly on the situation with the coronavirus, mentioning totalitarianism, Foucault and the horrors etat sanitaire in almost every interview.

In part, like Agamben, he considers the worst-case scenario to be that people will get used to or experience excessive disciplinary measures. 

He calls what people want to save lives a positive thing - progress for civilization, but the disadvantage is "overreaction, a kind of collective hysteria that surrounds this phenomenon", as well as potential state surveillance. “We all know that tracking us by apps, if it happens, should be done with a lot of care because that is very dangerous.”

In fact, the coronavirus forced the whole world to take really urgent and important measures, and everyone immediately forgot about the project "Great Middle East", and the environment, as well as feminism and LGBT issues. Levy is naturally worried about this, it has all disappeared from the TV screens.

He fears that European values are retreating in favor of focus on China, which, according to him, will seize the moment and take over the world. 

At the same time, Levy calls a profound, eschatological rethinking of the world during the pandemic "silly, disgusting and dangerous rhetoric". In this regard, his position is similar to Zizek's - but if the latter tries to translate the subject into pragmatic discourse, all Levy does is moan on about the sinking liberal globalist project.

Jacques Attali, another globalist ideologue, in contrast to Levy, examines mainly the economic aspects and consequences of coronavirus. Again, in contrast to Levy, he does suggest the possibility of a paradigm shift.

He admits that the Western system could collapse. For example, the bubonic plague forced people to rethink their worldviews, from politics to religion: first the figure of a policeman replaced a priest, and then the figure of a doctor displaced them.

Attali believes that if Western forces prove unable to control the tragedy, the entire system of power and the ideological foundations of power will be questioned and potentially replaced by a new model based on a different type of power and trust in another system of values.

“In other words, the system of authority based on the protection of individual rights may collapse. And with it, the two mechanisms that it had put in place: the market and democracy, both of which are a framework to manage and share scarce resources, while respecting the rights of individuals.”

The new system, he writes, “will not be based on faith or on force, or even reason (and not, without a doubt, on money, which is the ultimate avatar of reason). Political power will belong to those who can show the most empathy for others. The dominant economic sectors will also be related to empathy: health, hospitality, food, education and the environment. By relying, of course, on the major networks of production and the flow of energy and information, which are necessary in any case.”

He expects that people will stop buying useless things, return to the most necessary things and use time more efficiently. The role of Attali and his colleagues (according to him)  is to control this smooth transition.

Attali seems to be saying reasonable things: that Europe’s "life industries" (health care, supply, food, etc.) are highly dependent on the outside world, and will have to pay more for its own products and services as a price for autonomy.

But on the other hand, he is struggling hard to maintain the EU project, and to strengthen solidarity during the pandemic to introduce some life bonds, massive loans within the common system.

He says that it is not a so-called “coronabond,” which would aim to finance the entire economy, but rather, a “lifebond,” (a “life eurobond,” which could also be called a “sovereign bond”), which would only finance life industries (and the conversion of less essential industries to these sectors) is in order to ensure the autonomy of the Union.

“These resources would be managed on the model of what is being prepared, albeit at a slow pace, for a Europe of Defence. An ad hoc institution would decide on the rules for the distribution of this funding among the various countries and companies on the basis of tender offers, as massively and rapidly as possible. Even the countries that are most reluctant to show European solidarity would have a selfish interest in this.”

Attali also proposes creating a global hygiene business system.

A major global hygiene policy, Attali writes, should cover not only infrastructure sectors (such as wastewater networks, wholesale markets, etc.), but also companies producing hygiene-related products by processing these products, which are now too often made from disposable plastic. 

Attali is thus also worried about the fall of the previous globalist project - but unlike Levy, he is not moaning over the loss, but proposes to restart the system and reorient the global multinational business towards a more "ecological" and "hygienic" one.

Noam Chomsky

In fact, this is what the American libertarian socialist Noam Chomsky also says, believing that once pandemics are repeated, the liberal capitalist system, caught by surprise, is now trying to create the conditions for its future survival in its worst form.

Like most socialists, it makes US President Donald Trump the main target, and notes that all health-related elements of government have been gradually dismantled. But even Chomsky notes that this is not completely about Trump, but about a profoundly corrupted system. The US has found itself in a situation where no one can help - neither the neoliberal government nor the avid pharmaceutical companies.

Chomsky gave a relevant example of savage capitalism, discussing a scenario when the Obama administration contracted a company to develop high quality, low-cost ventilators, but the company was quickly bought by a larger competitor company that produced expensive ventilators. It then approached the government and said they wanted out of the contract because it wasn't profitable enough.

Chomsky's main fear is to “form an international of the most reactionary states in the world, then let that be the basis for U.S. power.” Between the most loyal members (actual and potential) of this capitalist "international" he distinguishes Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, India, Brazil, and partly Hungary and Italy.

Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama, the author of the theory "The End of History" (which, as we have seen in recent years, has not justified itself), known to all, reacted to the crisis.

According to him, when the pandemic subsides, the world will have to abandon the usual dichotomy of "democracy VS autocracy". He believes that it will rather be "some high-performing autocracies VS some with disastrous outcomes." The main criterion will be not the type of state, but the question of trust.

He believes that the US will eventually be able to match the capabilities of most authoritarian governments, including China - he argues that in the West, power is "democratically legitimized, it is more durable in the long run than the authority of a dictatorship". This has little to do with reality, given that the U.S. today is the world leader in Covid-19 infections, and the social support and healthcare system is cracking at the seams.

Fukuyama's main criticism falls on big bad Trump, but he fails to mention the capitalist measures of his predecessors who also failed in their attempts to provide citizens with affordable medicine and other basic needs.

Rocco Ronchi

 

Rocco Ronchi, another Italian philosopher, anti-populist but pragmatic, has been discussing the importance of walls and restrictions during the pandemic. He notes that this discussion has taken on a new characteristic - it is no longer about a wall between rich and poor as it used to be, it is about a wall between you and the "Other", isolation from one’s own neighbors.

However, in contrast to Agamben, he does not consider these walls and the lack of handshakes a sign of exception. On the contrary, he sees it as a new form of communication.

In his assessment, the pluses of the coronavirus crisis (despite all the obviously severe consequences) is the return to the arena of real politics (which, according to him, "must have precedence over the economy"), i.e. the realm of government responsibility. Policy should not be limited to a purely technical role.

“Political primacy means governing nature, not dominating it.”

And in the final, Ronchi smoothly shifts the topic into an existential sphere:

 “The virus rather articulates existence, ours and that of others, as “destiny”.  Suddenly we feel we are being dragged by something that is overpowering, which grows in the silence of our organs, ignoring our will. Covid 19 has become a sort of generalized metaphor, almost the symbolic precipitate of the human condition in post-modernity...”

An alternative opinion

However, the virus can be considered not only as part of the biopolitical sphere. It can be seen as something other than the collapse of liberalism and increased control over the population.

In the past, Agamben correctly criticized regimes of political modernity and the artificial concept of 'civil society' - fascism, pseudo-communism and liberalism, calling all three models authoritarian governance with references to Carl Schmitt. In his criticism of modernity, Agamben is quite right - after all, liberalism and capitalism were fully revealed during the Covid-19 epidemic, when the economy was shown to take precedence over human lives. 

But in the current situation, Agamben's (and many other aforementioned thinkers') position raises serious questions. How can a weak state cope with such a challenge as a pandemic? If we look past the media and the hysteria it invokes, the virus exists as a fact, and it really kills people. From a social point of view, it is not so much the state as the danger of the unknown that exposes our "bare lives" - this is most clearly manifested in the liberal communities of Western Europe and the United States, where instead of solidarity there is aggression in the stores as people physically struggle over the last roll of toilet paper. 

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has regularly been met with criticism for his illiberalism, ended up showing the world a positive example of handling the crisis. Hungary, from the very beginning, introduced strict measures, and has already brought things back to normal in comparison with the rest of the West. And this is not to mention China, where the strictest measures allowed life to resume by March - people are already going back to work and most industries are open.

The people are grateful for this. In most cases, people in emergencies voluntarily give themselves to the state within reasonable limits to save the life of the community. 

The problem is not so much in the future authoritarianism of states, but in the vulnerability of people under the capitalist system - and in this criticism left-wing philosophers are completely right. Only the pure liberals are completely wrong, because, from their point of view, their familiar and convenient transnational world is collapsing. However, an open world without borders in communist colors is also pure utopia. Given the crisis, we have clearly seen how every state had to make key decisions for itself, take responsibility and hastily spend its money, build its hospitals, and talk to its people. The WHO and other international organizations are hardly effective at a time when the main criterion is the ability to take responsibility for a particular country and to outline their own limits of severity and control.

But the most important thing, which is often forgotten by both leftists and liberals, is the role of internal reconsideration of Being during an emergency. People find themselves between 4 walls, beginning to understand how useless everything they have been doing all these years ultimately is, and coming to understand what is truly important. It is at such moments that the heroism of doctors, the courage of social workers and human solidarity can truly manifest itself.

The Left is correct that this is our chance to reform the system and build something new on the ruins of capitalism. What we will build is an open question. Elements of socialism will involuntarily come into our lives - at least in matters of health care and self-sufficiency. The most sensible thing seems to be the strengthening of the sovereignty of each individual state and the establishment of strong ties, primarily with neighbors, allowing these states to form self-sufficient poles. That would be the most effective and reliable model in any pandemic.