Was Agamben just wrong? Or more?

Arif KOŞAR¹

Some of the military, intelligence, social and political measures taken to detect “terrorists” and prevent attacks after September 11 have become increasingly the norms of daily life. The state of exception has been generalized. According to Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben, the state of exception has been the general rule of power since the World War I. There is a continuity between refugee camps and Guantanamo prisons and Auschwitz.

Is it possible to add the Coronavirus quarantine and its restrictions to this continuity?
Absolutely, according to Agamben. In his article on February 26, 2020, he says:
“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.”² 

“An ideal pretext!” At the time of writing the article, the number of known cases in Italy was 400 and the number of deaths was 12. It can be thought that Agamben had not yet grasped the dimensions of the epidemic despite all the warnings. However, his main idea did not change in the article he wrote on April 13, 2020, when the situation in Italy was very severe, the number of known cases increased to 159,516 and the death to 20,465: For example on March 17, he says:
“There have been more serious epidemics in the past, but no one ever thought for that reason to declare a state of emergency like the current one, which prevents us even from moving.”
Agamben also found the measures taken to be excessive as he considered the process as a “normal flu” or a past epidemic. He made these criticisms within the framework of the thesis on the control of power over biological life:
“The first thing that the wave of panic that has paralyzed the country obviously shows is that our society no longer believes in anything but bare life.”
And again with reference to the state of exception:
“The other thing, no less disquieting than the first, that the epidemic has caused to appear with clarity is that the state of exception, to which governments have habituated us for some time, has truly become the normal condition. … 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.”

BARE LIFE AND BIOPOLITICS

For Agamben, bare life, which he defines with purely biological life, has always been the subject of power. According to him, what the modern state does by placing biological life at the center of its accounts is nothing more than affirming this historical phenomenon. So the dominant power is a biopolitical power.

According to Agamben, the state of exception is one of the means of controlling bare life. The law is suspended when the exception is created. On the other hand, this kind of state of emergency is also defined by law. In other words, it is both within the law and the suspension of law. The exception is not against sovereignty, but is internal to it. The opposite one is first excluded (enemy), but at the same time with this exclusion it is covered and taken under control. In this exclusion, the political / social life of human is reduced to bare life, especially through closure practices. According to Agamben, the sovereignty relationship manifests itself most clearly in the practices of closure, such as refugee or concentration camps, as they are content with maintaining people's biological lives.

Agamben evaluates the coronovirus crisis in this theoretical context. He sees the limitations such as closing houses, the “social distance” rule, and not being able to meet people face to face as a kind of closing practice. Trying to impose his own theoretical framework instead of looking at the real facts of life, this is his dogmatism, prevents him from analyzing the coronavirus crisis correctly. Three basic points can be emphasized to understand the causes of Agamben's illusion.

BLINDNESS OF RESISTING FULL INSULATION

Firstly, according to Agamben, restrictions such as curfew and individual isolation by the Italian government are state of exception’s practices created by the government under the pretext of coronavirus. It is an attempt to reduce people's social relationships and assets to bare life. “The first thing that the wave of panic that has paralyzed the country obviously shows is that our society no longer believes in anything but bare life.” Measures such as full isolation proposed by scientists and health organizations show that scientific discourse is used only in establishing biopolitical sovereignty over bare life. 

Of course, there are apparent class differences between a millionaire living in his own detached mansion and the worker living in the slum. It is clear that any 'scientific' or 'technical' decision has a political nature and outcome.
So, how should the full isolation call of scientists be evaluated in the face of the coronavirus epidemic?
Agamben reads and rejects scientific/technical measures -which, of course, are political- as an element of the biopolitics of power, in the face of the epidemic. Dogmatism, in the form of discourse of science and the reduction of every practice of power to the sovereignty attempt over bare life, prevents Agamben from grasping the importance of even such a vital measure. However, considering the political nature of the call to stay at home, unions and progressive organizations are demanding that they must be implemented with paid vacation, and basic income for the unemployed.

THE STATE OF EXCEPTION THAT GOVERNMENTS DO NOT REALY WANT!

Second, contrary to Agamben's theoretical approach, the state of exception that emerged with the coronavirus epidemic was not an exception that the authorities longed for. Governments have long resisted curfews and halting the production. Even the most authoritative ones, most governments either did not use it when they had the “excuse” to shut people down to their homes and reduce life to bare life, or they made these decisions only when the epidemic spread too much and they were too late to take action.

For example, scientists and labor organizations in Turkey express demands of practice of "closure", secure and compulsory isolation that reduces social life to a bare life according to Agamben. Despite “being internal to the sovereign,” the government insists on ignoring this demand, turning down the opportunity to reduce life to bare life with the practice of closure. It has been clearly missing a biopolitical opportunity! President Erdoğan explains the reason for this:
"We, as Turkey, have to keep production, trade, employment and economy alive.”
As President Erdogan says, the necessity to “keep production, trade, employment, and keeping the economy alive” keeps him away from biopolitical practices that Agamben is concerned about and that will isolate most of the population. Because Erdogan, like other governments, lives in a country where he carries out administrative activities based on capitalist production. He also knows that without the people working, the production of value, a functioning market, capital accumulation, the basic law of capitalism, will be disrupted and predicts a possible major economic crisis.

In Italy the situation was not much different than in Turkey. Although the epidemic spread rapidly, the government did not take compulsory isolation measures with the concern that it would harm the economy for a long time. Production continued in unhealthy conditions in many plants in mid-March. Workers and unions have carried out numerous actions and strikes with the demand for the cessation of production and paid vacation. For example, workers at Fincantieri shipbuilding company in Marghera stated that the working conditions was not safe and went on strike. Workers in the Brescia region of Italy went on strike and demanded a suspension of production for 15 days. 450 employees of the Corneliani fashion brand in Mantova went on strike to protect their health: "There are no A-class and B-class citizens; health is equally important for everyone”. IKEA Anagnina workers in Rome, workers at the PSA Genova Terminal, Fiat workers in Molla are also some of the countless examples of action and strike. The Italian government did not close the factories for a long time. Assembly lines continued to produce, putting workers and their entire families at risk. However, the government did not miss the opportunity to call people to "stay home". "Our lives come before the capitalists' profit," USB (Unión Sindical de Base) said in a statement, pointing out that people cannot stay at home despite the call to stay home.

CONTEXT AGAMBEN MISSED

Third, the measures taken against Agamben's claim do not mean that people's lives are reduced to bare life. In his theory, isolation or closure is the most obvious form of sovereignty's dominance over bare life. However, every political practice becomes reality in the context of concrete situation, condition, and struggle. In this sense, it is relational. There is a serious difference between declaring curfew in times of coup and full isolation as a result of public struggle or the pressure created by general sensitivity.

Therefore, the implementation of full isolation and compliance with people does not indicate that our society no longer believes in anything other than bare life, contrary to Agamben's claim. It does not mean that “It is obvious that Italians are disposed to sacrifice practically everything — the normal conditions of life, social relationships, work, even friendships, affections, and religious and political convictions — to the danger of getting sick.”

REAL DANGER

Agamben's mistake is not the warnings about the powers that will make repressive and authoritarian practices a norm. Both commercial and administrative use of information and records of our biological life, and some practices in economic and social life will be used against the public.
However, possible oppressive policies in the future cannot be the reason for opposing vital scientific measures such as full isolation today. Whether these are made part of authoritarian practices after the epidemic is a matter of struggle starting today. The fight against sacrificing scientific measures to the needs of the market is as important and vital as this fight.

Consequently, measures in practice are not the result of a tendency to create an exception that is inherent to power. However, Agamben's mistake is not only to understand the severity of the current crisis sufficiently, therefore, to keep a distance from the measures taken. The basis of his delusion is in his general political theoretical approach, rather than being specific to a particular subject: he greatly reduces power to the axis of sovereignty over "bare life" and "biopolitics", ignores the relationship between capitalist production and the recreation of social life, including the biological one.

The distance between associating every political/technical measure and state of exception to a power as the inner tendency of the sovereign and the interpretation of the coronavirus epidemic as an American or Chinese conspiracy is shorter than expected.

1- PhD in Social Science, from Turkey.
2- The following sources were used in Agamben quotations in the article: 
-    Agamben, G. (2020) “A Question”, 15.04.2020, https://itself.blog/2020/04/15/giorgio-agamben-a-question/ (Accessed: 27.04.2020)
-    Agamben, G. (2020) “Clarifications”, 17.03.2020, https://itself.blog/2020/03/17/giorgio-agamben-clarifications/ (Accessed: 27.04.2020) 
-    Agamben, G. (2020) “The state of exception provoked by an unmotivated emergency”, 26.02.2020, http://positionswebsite.org/giorgio-agamben-the-state-of-exception-provoked-by-an-unmotivated-emergency/ (Accessed: 27.04.2020)