[D66] Giorgio Agamben: “The state of exception provoked by an unmotivated emergency”

[Antid Oto]

  Giorgio Agamben, “The state of exception provoked by an unmotivated
  emergency”

By
positionswebsite.org
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<https://getpocket.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpositionswebsite.org%2Fgiorgio-agamben-the-state-of-exception-provoked-by-an-unmotivated-emergency%2F>

/This is a translation of an article that first appeared as “Lo stato 
d’eccezione provocato da un’emergenza immotivata,” 
<https://ilmanifesto.it/lo-stato-deccezione-provocato-da-unemergenza-immotivata/?fbclid=IwAR17ciygOzmIpolNxACx8WMoRzrPpePxJMN0Tns7ni69ZfwO_QzmHYeYXVk%5C> 
in/ il manifesto//

In order to make sense of the frantic, irrational, and absolutely 
unwarranted emergency measures adopted for a supposed epidemic of 
coronavirus, we must begin from the declaration of the Italian National 
Research Council 
<https://www.cnr.it/it/nota-stampa/n-9233/coronavirus-rischio-basso-capire-condizioni-vittime> 
(NRC), according to which “there is no SARS-CoV2 epidemic in Italy.”

It continues: in any case “the infection, according to the 
epidemiological data available as of today and based on tens of 
thousands of cases, causes light/moderate symptoms (a variant of flu) in 
80-90% of cases. In 10-15%, there is a chance of pneumonia, but which 
also has a benign outcome in the large majority of cases. We estimate 
that only 4% of patients require intensive therapy.”

If this is the real situation, why do the media and the authorities do 
their utmost to create a climate of panic, thus provoking a true state 
of exception, with severe limitations on movement and the suspension of 
daily life and work activities for entire regions?

Two factors can help explain such a disproportionate response.

First and foremost, what is once again manifest here is the growing 
tendency to use *the state of exception as a normal governing paradigm*. 
The executive decree (/decreto legge/), approved by the government “for 
reasons of hygiene and public safety,” produces a real militarization 
“of those municipalities and areas in which there is at least one person 
who tests positive and for whom the source of the infection is unknown, 
or in which there is a least one case that is not connected to a person 
who recently traveled from an area affected by the contagion.”

Such a vague and indeterminate formula will allow [the government] to 
rapidly extend the state of exception to all regions, as it is 
practically impossible that other cases will not appear elsewhere.

Let us consider the serious limitations of freedom imposed by the 
executive decree:

 1. A prohibition against leaving the affected municipality or area for
    all people in that municipality or area.
 2. A prohibition against entering the affected municipality or area
 3. The suspension of all events or initiatives (regardless of whether
    they are related to culture, sport, religion, or entertainment), and
    a suspension of meetings in any private or public space, including
    enclosed spaces if they are open to the public.
 4. The suspension of educational services in kindergartens and schools
    at every level, including higher education and excluding only
    distance learning.
 5. The closure of museums and other cultural institutions as listed in
    article 101 of the Statute on cultural heritage and landscape, and
    in executive decree number 42 from 01/22/2004. All regulations on
    free access to those institutions are also suspended.
 6. The suspension of all kinds of educational travel, in Italy and abroad.
 7. The suspension of all publicly held exams and all activities of
    public offices, except essential services or public utility services.
 8. The enforcement of quarantine and active surveillance on individuals
    who had close contact with confirmed cases of infection.

    It is blatantly evident that these restrictions are disproportionate
    to the threat from what is, according to the NRC, a normal flu, not
    much different from those that affect us every year.

    We might say that once terrorism was exhausted as a justification
    for exceptional measures, the invention of an epidemic could offer
    the ideal pretext for broadening such measures beyond any limitation.

The other factor, no less disquieting, is the state of fear, which in 
recent years has diffused into individual consciousnesses and which 
translates into a real need for *states of collective panic*, for which 
the epidemic once again offers the ideal pretext.

Therefore, in a perverse vicious circle, the limitation of freedom 
imposed by governments is accepted in the name of a desire for safety, 
which has been created by the same governments who now intervene to 
satisfy it.

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