I'm not familiar with this Agamben (gasp!) but am fairly convinced that the assertion about mass disposal of plague victims is transparent nonsense.
The inconvenient dead have frequently been shoveled into pits, dumped, and incinerated en masse , whether their piles are the result of pandemic disease, warfare, or simply good old-fashioned mass murder. Only a second-or-third-tier European philosopher could convince himself that this is not true solely on the basis of a few newspaper articles and the art of introspection. There is IMO no factual basis for anything Agamben appears to have said about the supposed barbaric conspiracy behind mask-wearing, social isolation, and the other measures countries have been trying to take against the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that Italy has appointed a no-doubt-piggy business executive to head up its COVID response hardly qualifies as evidence of a conspiracy if that is what Agamben is promoting. The ruling class sticks to its trusted servants--this is class warfare, not conspiracy. As to suppression of dissent across the board, I am not familiar with the Italian situation recently so can't comment, but this certainly hasn't stopped BLM in the United States--nor the right wing either. More falsehoods occur in the following Agamben paragraph, quoted in the Times article: How could we have accepted, in the name of a risk that we couldn’t even quantify, not only that the people who are dear to us, and human beings more generally, should have to die alone but also — and this is something that had never happened before in all of history from Antigone to today — that their corpses should be burned without a funeral? 1) It seems to me that the risks involved with COVID-19 are eminently quantifiable and have been quantified to the extent that accurate data have been made available despite the efforts of deniers like Agamben who, again at least in this country, are definitely wielding great power, do not wish the facts to emerge for political reasons, and have been eminently successful in preventing adequate public health measures on the grounds that they are based on a hoax and intended to to suppress truth. 2) Mass burial or incineration of corpses has "never before happened in all of history."? This is a big lie and preposterous on the face of it. Maybe he's only talking about the funerals during pandemics--this is still drivel. Among other things, that raises the question of why, given this "philospher's" sweeping perspective he suddenly limits his scope so drastically. To call this nonsense a waste of time hardly does justice to its obvious disingenuity. Apparently nobody ever dares talk back to this son of a bitch. Why, COVID is a conspiracy to cancel him alone! -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#774): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/774 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76367830/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES<br />#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.<br />#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.<br />#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
