All
 
|
 
 


Intellectual Community Discusses the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Coronavirus Debate as a New Cultural Phenomenon
 
PIIS086954150017612-3-1
DOI10.31857/S086954150017612-3
Publication type Article
Status Published
Authors
Dmitry Mikhel 
Affiliation: Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration
Address: Russian Federation, Moscow
Journal nameEtnograficheskoe obozrenie
Edition№6
Pages314-330
Abstract

This article examines the phenomenon of the recent debate about the COVID-19 pandemic, in which leading intellectuals of our time have become involved. The special position taken by intellectuals today is reflected in the sharpness of their statements on the pandemic and their attempts to distance themselves from the official position on coronavirus infection taken by most doctors, virologists, and politicians. Using the channels of information available to them – journals, TV channels, Internet sites – intellectuals tend to view the pandemic as a global crisis capable of radically changing the lives of entire societies and humanity. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben speaks of COVID-19 as an emergency invented by the authorities, depriving humans of all the attributes of existence except “naked life”. The Slovenian thinker Slavoj Žižek proclaims the thesis that the answer to the coronavirus can only be a renewed communism. The Russian political scientist Sergey Kurginyan interprets COVID-19 as a global systemic disaster with political, economic, anthropological, and other aspects.

KeywordsCOVID-19 pandemic, intellectuals, discussions, Europe, Russia, Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Žižek, Sergey Kurginyan
AcknowledgmentThis article is a translation of: Д.В. Михель. Интеллектуалы обсуждают пандемию COVID-19: дискуссии о коронавирусе как новое культурное явление // Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie. 2021. No 6. P. 62–80. DOI: 10.31857/S086954150017928-0. The original article was written on the basis of the RANEPA state assignment research programme.
Received20.12.2021
Publication date23.12.2021
Number of characters54973
Cite     Download pdf
Размещенный ниже текст является ознакомительной версией и может не соответствовать печатной

Table of contents

“Our society no longer believes in anything but the stripped-down life” (Agamben)
“The coronavirus... will force us to reinvent communism” (Žižek)
“The scale of the systemic disaster called coronavirus is too great” (Kurginyan)
1 The current COVID-19 pandemic represents not only a real threat of infection, illness, and loss of life for the vast majority of people on the planet but also an endless related information buzz. It is becoming more and more difficult to hide from the deadly virus, but it is even more difficult to shy away from the flood of news and different rumours accompanying its spread. This makes the spread of COVID-19, among other things, a discursive event. All groups of society are involved in the conversation about the pandemic, but the most significant participants in the discussion are virologists, doctors, politicians, and intellectuals. Everyone is concerned about what the former two categories say, since they are viewed by the public as the primary experts on the above issues. Politicians’ opinions attract attention only because the decisions they make and concrete administrative measures they enforce depend on what they say. The positions of intellectuals often run counter to the views of other opinion leaders. Intellectuals are bearers of critical thinking in the contemporary world – they follow the Cartesian principle: “If I doubt, I exist”. It is these people who claim to be the true conscience of the nation, the advanced and independent voice of the minority.
2 Before the advent of the Enlightenment and the spread of universal literacy, any educated person could be considered an intellectual; subsequently, this notion began to refer mostly to people connected with literature and journalism. The hallmarks of the intellectual in the twentieth century were one’s scientific work and teaching at the university. According to Foucault, whereas intellectuals were deemed to be multi-hyphenates in the past, originating from the sphere of law, nowadays they can be represented by specialists in various narrow domains, including natural science. Nevertheless, they are still distinguished by their particular political position: their willingness to disassociate themselves from the ruling authorities and to speak on behalf of the rest of the society (Foucault 2002: 205–206).
3 The scientific observation of intellectuals’ activity during the pandemic reveals the following: everything they do boils down to the words they speak and the texts they produce. These are people who write and talk about the pandemic – being writing machines and talking heads. It is almost impossible to find anything else beyond this in any spheres involving intellectuals. Their texts are devoid of colloquialisms and are constructed according to the norms of literary speech. Where they speak – precisely in their status of intellectuals – they reproduce their own texts, in the first place. For this reason, the way they speak recedes to the background, while what they say comes to the forefront. Owing to intellectuals, the broad variety of opinions on the pandemic provokes a lively debate. The coronavirus debate that emerged in early 2020 has already become a cultural phenomenon. The quality and urgency of this debate are determined by the prominence of involved intellectuals, the semantic richness of texts pronounced/written by them, and the critical political stance they have taken. This article focuses on the positions regarding the current pandemic, taken by the three most prominent intellectuals of the time, who succeeded to impart particular significance and poignancy to the general conversation on COVID-19.
4

“Our society no longer believes in anything but the stripped-down life” (Agamben)
5 Giorgio Agamben, the Italian philosopher and essayist, was one of the first in Europe to initiate a discussion on the coronavirus pandemic. This was facilitated by the fact that he had already had a track record of conceptualisation of the problems connected with power mobilisation, state of emergency, and biopolitics (Agamben 2011). In addition, he had contacts with the Quodlibet publishing house in Macerata where he launched his own column on the website in May 2017. Moreover, Italy was the first European country to face the pandemic in 2020. Agamben started this discussion as a public intellectual with a penchant for denial of violence and nonacceptance of attacks on civil liberties. The essays he published in Quodlibet evoked broad discussion in various countries. In Russia, they were also actively commented upon (Bossong 2020; Wagner 2020; Zhaivoronok 2020; Kaspe 2020a, 2020b; Kozenko 2020; Rudnev 2020).
6 On February 26, 2020, Agamben published an essay “Inventing the pandemic” (Agamben 2020a) in which he appeared as a sceptic rejecting the reality of the pandemic and believing that the authorities were using the coronavirus as a pretext to impose tighter controls on the society. Weighing each phrase accurately, Agamben expressed his opinion of what was happening, as follows:
7 It has been estimated that only 4% of patients need hospitalisation in intensive care... If this is the real situation, then why do the media and the authorities work hard to spread the atmosphere of panic, causing the present-day state of affairs with severe restrictions on relocation and suspension of normal living and working conditions in all regions? Two factors may help to explain this disproportionate behaviour. In the first place, one can observe again a growing tendency to use the state of emergency as a normal paradigm of the government... Another factor, no less disturbing, is the fear that has apparently spread in recent years in people’s minds and which translates into a real need for collective panic for which the epidemic is an ideal pretext (Agamben 2020a).

Number of purchasers: 0, views: 626

Readers community rating: votes 0 

1. Agamben, G. 2011. Homo sacer: Chrezvychainoe polozhenie [Homo Sacer. State of Exception]. Moscow: Evropa.
2. Foucault, M. 2002. Politicheskaia funktsiia intellektuala [The Political Function of the Intellectual]. In Intellektualy i vlast': izbrannye politicheskie stat'i, vystupleniia i interv'iu [Intellectuals and Power: Selected Political Articles, Speeches and Interviews], by M. Foucault, 201–209. Moscow: Praksis.
3. Nancy, J.-L. 2020. Virusnaia chrezvychainaia situatsiia [Viral Emergency Situation]. European Journal of Psychoanalysis. October 08. https://syg.ma/@journal-psychoanalysis/zhan-liuk-nansi-virusnaia-chriezvychaina-situatsia 
4. Oslon, A.A. ed. 2021. Sotsiologiia pandemii. Proekt koronaFOM [Sociology of the Pandemic: Project CoronaFOM]. Moscow: Institut Fonda Obshchestvennoe Mnenie.
5. Žižek, S. 2020a. Pandemic!: COVID-19 Shakes the World. New York: OR Books.
6. Žižek, S. 2020b. Pandemic! 2: Chronicles of a Time Lost. New York: OR Books.
7. Žižek, S. 2020c. Monitor and Punish & Yes, Please! The Philosophical Salon. March 16. https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/monitor-and-punish-yes-please 
8. Žižek, S. 2020d. Dans l’ordre supérieur des choses, nous sommes une espèce qui ne compte pas. Philosophie Magazine. March 16. https://www.philomag.com/articles/slavoj-Žižek-dans-lordre-superieur-des-choses-nous-sommes-une-espece-qui-ne-compte-pas 
9. Žižek, S. 2020e. Is Barbarism with a Human Face Our Fate? Critical Inquiry. March 18. https://critinq.wordpress.com/2020/03/18/is-barbarism-with-a-human-face-our-fate 
10. Žižek, S. 2020f. Why are We Tired All the Time? The Philosophical Salon. April 2. https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/why-are-we-tired-all-the-time/#_edn1

Система Orphus

Loading...
Up