What does the scenario that world politics sets before us look like in the twilight of the Agamben’s interventions? Spectacular domination by mass media, iatrocracy of doctor-priests, sovereign policing controlling the streets: this is the image of a world in which the means — conceived as respective exclusive monopolies: monopoly of language, monopoly of health, monopoly of violence — now assert themselves as ends unto themselves. In fact, the spectacle is nothing but a stage of capitalism in which our linguistic nature, which has now attained its extreme alienation, advances menacingly towards us, radically inverted. The same is true of our conception of health care and policing, where our specifically human capacities for healing and violence, long since alienated, now loom over us as dangers. Thus, our muteness encounters language through the words of the media, our illness meets health through the health meted out by doctors, and our powerlessness encounters violence through the violence of uniformed men. Our singularity everywhere encounters its own natural capacities in forms that are alienated, separated, and hypostatized: in the media, medical institutions, and the police. https://enoughisenough14.org/2021/01/15/marginal-notes-on-the-epidemic-as-politics/
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Thank you Rich. Unanimity of opinion is not what I seek. I aim at getting through the endless fog banks with others so situated. I type to think and hope others too stride boldly in the fog
Greatly appreciate your commentary, Stegiel. Even if in disagreement occasionally (not terribly often).