Isabelle HAYEUR

During the pandemic, the French newspaper lundimatin, a site of political, philosophical and sociological information and analysis, inspired my reflections. In particular I read the texts by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben and the authors who commented on him. I thought about what we were going through, about this confinement imposed on us and about the improvised measures taken by our governments. I retained the concepts of “biopolitics”, “naked life”, “control society” and “state of exception”. Real and manipulated, this pandemic became the ideal pretext for putting into place supplementary control measures. In silence and isolation, I observe, powerless, the transformations by this crisis of our societies. Our lives seem to be shrinking, we become administered bodies, potentially dangerous biological organisms. The state of emergency has unconsciously entered each of us, captives of a fear relayed and maintained by our information networks. Voluntary measures, surveillance, reprimands, denouncing neighbours. Docile citizens act against what remains of their rights. “We as the ultimate threat?”¹

[1] “The coronavirus and the state of exception”, lundimatin #232, March 4, 2020, https://non.copyriot.com/the-coronavirus-and-the-state-of-exception/.