The Silence of Numbers | 2020-21

With Alan Harris

Then one day the crisis fell on us, on a scale so vast that it was impossible to grasp, leaving us clinging to analysis that failed, even our ‘philosophical key-worker’ Slavoj Zizek, whose book on pandemic has triggered a maelstrom of reactions, seems to be struggling. Zizek views this exceptional period as a crossroads, and wonders which form the world will take: a system of ‘barbaric capitalism’, as he calls it, in which the unrestrained lust for money will cost hundreds of thousands lives and widen economic gaps? The old and the weak will be the first to be let go of, “and not because of malice, but because of the lack of an alternative”. Or a ‘neo-communism’, Not to be confused with the ‘old-style’ states of the 20th century, he tells us, but the necessity for a “global organisation that can control and regulate the economy as well as limit the sovereignty of nation states when needed - and a coordinated shift away from the market.” He sees stirrings of this in the massive mobilisation of state resources to pay private sector wages, nationalise services and direct industrial production. He points out that the moral task during this pandemic is to alleviate suffering, not to ‘economise’. There is something profoundly radical in the way states have adhered to this anti-economistic logic by locking down, he says, and the temptation to return to ‘normal’ at the expense of the sick must be resisted.

So Žižek suggests thinking outside the market mechanisms of profit, and to come up with self-sustainable communities for the allocation of resources–that in the current disaster there is potential for some kind of ‘communism’ based on human cooperation. As he puts it : “it should be a disaster communism as an antidote to the disaster capitalism.” He argues that the state must assume a much more active role – and It is through our effort to save humanity from self-destruction that we are creating a new humanity. “The threat of virus contagion provided us with new forms of solidarity and clarified the need for control over power….It is only through this mortal threat that we can envision a unified humanity.”

For the Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben ”the problem is not to give opinions on the gravity of the disease, but to ask about the ethical and political consequences of the epidemic”. The first thing that the wave of panic shows, he argues, is that “our society no longer believes in anything but bare life.” and what is a society that has no value other than survival?, he asks. A society that lives in a perpetual state of emergency cannot be a free society. “We in fact live in a society that has sacrificed freedom to so- called ‘reasons of security’ and has therefore condemned itself to live in a perennial state of fear and insecurity. The naked life, and the fear of losing it, is not something that brings men and women together, but something that blinds and separates them”. Agamben‘s second point, no less disturbing than the first, is that the epidemic is clearly showing that the state of exception, has become a normal condition. “There have been more serious epidemics in the past, but no one ever thought of declaring a state of emergency like today, one that forbids us even to move. Men have become so used to living in conditions of permanent crisis and emergency that they don’t seem to notice that their lives have been reduced to a purely biological condition, one that has lost not only any social and political dimension, but even any compassionate and emotional one”. It’s not surprising that we talk about the virus in terms of a war, he argues, “the emergency provisions effectively force us to live under a curfew. But a war against an invisible enemy that can nestle in any other human being is the most absurd of wars. It is, to be truthful, a civil war. The enemy isn’t somewhere outside, it’s inside us.” What’s worrying, he stresses, is not so much the present, not only the present, but the aftermath.

The psychoanalyst & philosopher, Sergio Benvenuto, also an Italian, has a different perspective on what may happen to human relations. “The more the others keep at a distance from me, the closer I feel to them, this is why Agamben has failed to understand anything about what’s happening in the molecularity of human relations”. Benvenuto tells the story of how a young friend of his keeps him at a distance of at least three meters and smiles. He very much appreciates this ‘non-gesture’ of the young man, because he knows that the young friend is mainly trying to protect him; ‘because he’s old’- the same way that he is protecting the elderly in his own family.

Benvenuto states, “what’s really frightening Is not what we know, but what we do not know about the virus and there’s very little we do know about it, getting it day by day, creates the anxiety – by no means irrational – of the unknown”. And yet there are those who are still sceptical of the gravity of the disease, he points out, some do not respect this secure distance and do not even wear face masks, they are basically cynical and ultimately antisocial individuals, “today the sociable avoid society”. So unlike Agamben’s critique of the panic created, he believes in some cases “spreading terror can be wiser than taking things ‘philosophically’! And “sometimes being scared is an act of courage.”

Benvenuto is more concerned about the economic crisis that he sees as far greater (a crisis worth than in 2008?) than medical ones. Although he admits that he may be proved wrong in the coming days. He also acknowledges the effects of the epidemic will be drastic/devastating: ‘working remotely’ from home and avoiding the office, is only one aspect. And we will no longer need to go out to do the shopping or to theatres to see movies, nor to buy books in bookshops: stores and bookshops (alas) will disappear and everything will be done from home. “Life will become ‘hearhted’ or ‘homeized’. (we already need to start thinking up neologisms)”. Schools too will disappear: with the use of devices like Skype, students will be able to attend their teachers’ lessons from home. “This generalized seclusion caused by the epidemic (or rather, by attempts to prevent it) will become our habitual way of life”.

Whether we agree with any of the above views or not, one thing is clear as Zizek astutely observed, “the world as we know it, will be just nostalgia”!

The work presented here is prompted by this crisis, indicating the sense of disorientation, disconnection, and isolation. Silence reigns over the image, a silence of explanations unknown, or impossible to share. And yet there seems to be a glimpse of hope – as in parts, life goes on, resists being turned upside down!