In the past, pandemics were considered divine punishment, but we now
understand the biological characteristics of viruses and we know they
are spread through social interaction. What used to be divine has become
human - all too human, as Nietzsche would say.
But while the virus dispels the divine, we are discovering that living
beings are more complex and harder to define than we had previously
imagined, and also that political power is more complex than we may have
thought. And this, argues Nancy, helps us to see why the term
'biopolitics' fails to grasp the conditions in which we now find
ourselves. Life and politics challenge us together. Our scientific
knowledge tells us that we are dependent only on our own technical
power, but can we rely on technologies when knowledge itself includes
uncertainties? If this is the case for technical power, it is much more
so for political power, even when it presents itself as guided by
objective data.
The virus is a magnifying glass that reveals the contradictions,
limitations and frailties of the human condition, calling into question
as never before our stubborn belief in progress and our hubristic sense
of our own indestructibility as a species.
