Abstract
This essay examines the usefulness (or not) of Agamben’s notion of the state of exception as a framework for understanding the drastic changes to social life brought on by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. It also considers a number of alternative interpretations – of metaphysical or divine inspiration. COVID-19 has brought on much confusion, and this essay might or might not contribute to dissipating some of it. As always, it’s best to wash our hands.
Highlights
Protest like VoltaireApril 27, Day 40 of our “lockdown” – sitting on my balcony on a splendid Miami afternoon overlooking a blue, blue ocean, so calm it hurts
Is that enough though to refute Agamben’s framework, which is based on the assumption that there is “a growing tendency to use the state of exception as normal paradigm of government” (Agamben, 2020a, p.18)? On the surface, the COVID-19 pandemic seems the perfect pretext for letting such an “exception” turn into the new normal, a tone struck by many others, including the British journalist and increasingly popular public intellectual Afua Hirsch
We have put democratic checks in place that challenge national governments for overreach and for failing to abide by the country’s constitution. One such example is the Constitutional Court in Colombia, which has confronted the government on a number of occasions over its handling of the national displacement crisis. Among others it issued a ground-breaking ruling in 2004 – known as T-025 – in which the Court affirmed that the state of affairs for internally displaced people in Colombia was “unconstitutional.” Since the Constitutional Court has issued several orders making specific demands of the national government to rectify this situation, such as Decree 005 of 2009, which has become a crucial reference point for NGOs and Afro-Colombian activists demanding a differentiated approach to displacement that would value sufficiently the specific needs of displaced Afro-Colombians (Oslender, 2016)
Summary
Protest like VoltaireApril 27, Day 40 of our “lockdown” – sitting on my balcony on a splendid Miami afternoon overlooking a blue, blue ocean, so calm it hurts. [es] La ira de Greta; o quédate en casa, Agamben: COVID-19 y el (no-)estado de excepción
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