From the
most recent of Giorgio Agamben's pandemic interventions,
published on the website of Quodlibet we read: "
Somewhere there is a sheet of paper on which
the names of those who, in a world of lies, have testified to the truth that is
written. This sheet exists, but it is
illegible. Then there is another sheet,
perfectly legible, which records these same names: it is in the hands of police
officers and journalists".
The number of these short interventions now count in the dozens. Many
- like this one, which is accompanied by quotes from Dante Alighieri and Bertolt
Brecht - are of a gnomic, aphoristic type. For a philosopher known for his
detailed examinations of the obscure corners of deep European history and thought,
backed up with all the resources of citation and decades of specialist
learning, these "real time" comments are akin to nakedness. One of
the more extended pieces which has held my attention since it was published in
May of 2020 is titled Medicine as
Religion. In it Agamben claims that the pandemic has given rise to a new
"cultic" practice elevating medicine and health more generally to the
level of a religion, something we believe we believe. This most recent
transformation is itself only the latest form that the long running veneration
of science as the religion of Western modernity has taken.
This intervention was written months before the Covid vaccination
program began, and even before the WHO changed its advice on masks. Over
eighteen months later I frequently hear the more zealous supporters of
vaccination and covid restrictions being compared to religious fanatics. And
with my own eyes I've seen the frantic genuflections of people practicing the
UK government's 'Hands, Face, Space' rituals (which someone wittily noted has
displaced the Catholic "spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch" as the Faithfull's
quotidian sacrament). There was, then, something prophetic about the general
thrust of Agamben's analysis. But with many of these short pieces there is a
tendency to generalise, and without broader exposition Agamben's noted
inclination towards hyperbole ends up being the dominant factor.
"That science has become
the religion of our time, that in which people believe they believe, has been
obvious for some time now. In the modern West there have coexisted and, to a
certain extent, still coexist three great systems of belief: Christianity,
capitalism, and science. In the history of modernity, these three “religions”
have often intersected, entering from time to time into conflict and later
reconciling in a different way, until they progressively reached a sort of
peaceful, articulated coexistence, if not a true and proper collaboration in
the name of a common interest".
This schema is a rather drastic simplification of the methodology
Agamben deployed in different ways and with different emphases throughout his
rightly celebrated Homo Sacer series
of books. There he frequently refuses the notion that historical forms and
ideas can be neatly divided in this way. Commonly, he prefers to talk about
"zones of indistinction" when it comes to concepts that appear to reside
in the liminal space between otherwise familiar categories. This counts as much
for the Homo Sacer herself - cast out
between the divine and earthly realms - as it does for the
"signatures" which in his examination of the writings of the early
Church Fathers Agamben identifies in concepts such as Oikonomia, acclamation or hierarchy, the effect of which is to
displace them into a constant oscillation between the secular and religious. As
he states in his methodological text The
Signature of All Things (2009), "a signature does not merely express a
semiotic relation between a signans
and a signatum; rather, it is what -
persisting in this relation without coinciding with it - displaces and moves it
into another domain, thus positioning it in a new network of pragmatic and
hermeneutic relations".
Elsewhere, during an elaboration of Michel Foucault's use of the term dispositif (usually rendered as apparatus
in English) written in 2006 he offers a definition of religion which again
emphasises the dynamic and boundary dissolving nature of the sacred/profane
divide: "...one can define religion as that which removes things, places,
animals, or people from common use and transports them to a separate sphere.
Not only is there no religion without separation, but every separation contains
or conserves in itself a genuinely religious nucleus. The apparatus that
activates and regulates separation is sacrifice. [...] , sacrifice always
sanctions the passage of something from the profane to the sacred, from the
human sphere to the divine. [...] From this perspective, capitalism and other
modern forms of power seem to generalize and push to the extreme the processes
of separation that define religion".
And finally, in a passage that would seem to have obvious relevance
for understanding the past two years, we read in Capitalism as Religion (2017): "But it is in every sphere of
experience that capitalism attests its religious character and, at the same
time, its parasitical relation with Christianity. [...] If the Church seems to
have closed its eschatological office, today it is above all the scientists,
transformed into apocalyptic prophets , who announce the immanent end of life
on earth. And in every sphere, in the economy as in politics, the capitalist
religion declares a state of permanent crisis (crisis etymologically means "definitive judgement"),
which is, as the same time, a state of exception that has become normal, whose
only possible outcome presents itself, precisely as in the Apocalypse, as
"a new earth". There are echoes here of anthropologist Carlo Caduff,
whose work on pandemic preparedness and epidemiology anticipated so much about
the confluence of expertise and government during the crisis, and who wrote in 2014: "Precaution has become a solid ground for dire prophecy and the
thrill of terror, allowing experts and officials to commit a leap of faith and
proceed as if the most frightening scenario was about to come true. In the
political economy of disaster capitalism it is always better—ethically,
politically, economically, and institutionally—to assume that the apocalypse is
nigh".
Each of these quotes from Agamben implies a method operating on the
level of ontology. A seemingly commonplace distinction is shown to have a more
fundamental basis, rooted either in a signification which exceeds its referent,
or in a deeper, more primordial structure, within which the distinction forms
two modes or the excluded category is captured. Rarely if ever does Agamben
talk about the psychology or epistemology of religious belief, but much of his
short essay in May 2020 seems aimed at that level, certainly where he talks
about cultic practice; which is to say, the everyday, pragmatic or liturgical
side of religion.
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| Giorgio Agamben's contributed virtually for the launch of the Commissione Dubbio e Precauzione (DU.PRE), Dec 8, 2021 |
“What is new is that between
science and the other two religions there has ignited, without our noticing it,
a subterranean and implacable conflict, the successful results of which for
science are daily before our eyes and determine in an unheard-of way all
aspects of our existence. This conflict does not concern, as happened in the
past, theory or general principles, but, so to speak, cultic practice. Indeed,
science too, like every religion, knows diverse forms and levels through which
it organizes and orders its structure: to the elaboration of a subtle and
rigorous dogmatic there corresponds in practice an extremely broad and
widespread cultic sphere which coincides with what we call technology”.
The simplified historiological schema I highlighted above bears some
resemblance to Carl Schmitt's analysis in The
Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations (1929), where he claims
European statecraft has always attempted to govern from out of a neutralised central
domain, which in the past included religion and economy. The 20th century, he went
on to argue, appeared not just as the age of technology but of the religious
belief in technology; "The question
of the significance of overwhelming technicity should for now be left open,
because the belief in technology is in fact only the result of a certain
tendency in the shifting of the central domain - as a belief, it is only the
result of this shifting".
Now, according to Schmitt we have been living in an age marked by the
religious belief in technology for some time. His analysis was rooted in the
experience of Germany's rapid industrialisation during the latter half of the
19th century. This context means his religion of technology and its miraculous
powers is comparable to what otherwise we might call the religion of progress,
much exemplified by Anglo-Saxon industrialists and pretty much the unofficial
ideology of the British Empire. Indeed Schmitt had a notorious animosity
towards English (and later American) technical domination, seeing it as the
wellspring of global disenchantment and spiritual impoverishment, not to
mention Germany's status as also-rans in the colonial scramble. Agamben, no
doubt drawing on these thoughts, is nevertheless talking about much more recent
events, and moreover he is specifically imputing a religious character to
medicine during the pandemic.
A straight-forward response here might be to ask whether medicine and
cultic practice were not always aligned from the start? All cultures of the
earth have known some form of witch doctors, healing rituals and rites in which
the pragmatic/cultic part is paramount, forming as it were a bridge or
mediating zone between the state of the individual and their community, or even
the cosmos. Modern medicine, having benefitted from the results of diverse
scientific fields has largely dispelled its superstitious and cosmological
supports, at least where causes are concerned. Nevertheless it is certainly
true that vestiges of the older holism persist where the medico-technical
intervention coincides with broader social factors, among them being: the
nature and meaning of recovery, the social status of the illness, and the
network of complexities situating the "patient' within the heath culture
of the society at large.
And is not the continuing significance of cultic practice within
health most strongly confirmed in the case of the placebo?; a
"treatment" which carries an effect without the presence of an active
agent? The term originates in the Vulgate, psalms 114:9 Placebo Domino in regione vivorum. (I will please the Lord in the
land of the living.) This psalm was commonly used in the Office of the Dead where we also find the
well-known Timor mortis conturbat me (I am scared to death of dying), which has become something of an silent guiding
maxim for many during the pandemic. Over time placebo became a shorthand for
any deceptive act to please, apparently owing to the common practice of
mourners with no connection to the deceased participating in the ritual for the
purpose of getting a share of the funeral meal.
Agamben certainly has a point about the pandemic leading to an
explosion of strange public rituals, be they obsessive hand-washing - which
compares to the Islamic Wudhu,
performed before entering a mosque - to the diverse practices around masks
which have been such a flashpoint in Europe and America. This might be more
easily explained if modern European societies were places where rituals and
superstitions were still thriving, rather than having been melted into air by
the white heat of consumerism. As Max Weber famously analysed, Capitalism and
the Protestant faith share a common ethos, one expression of which are multiform
processes of rationalisation. Consequently, both are lacking in ritual, in
lingering, in acts which signify the marking of (non-clock) time.
We should perhaps concede that there was a space open for a new cultic
practice to be introduced for the disaffected classes (most of all the
professional middle classes) to fall into. But it is also true that the Covid
cult furnishes rituals of a unusual kind. Lingering is by no means encouraged,
particularly in proximity with others. And a deadening suspicion falls upon
anything that denotes a commitment to the intensity of a life well lived. In
his book The Disappearance of Rituals Byung-Chul Han reflected on this fear when
discussing George Bataille's distinction between strong and weak play. For us
moderns, he claims; "Only weak play
is tolerated and it forms a functional element within production. The sacred
seriousness of play has entirely given way to the profane seriousness of work
and production. Life subordinated to the dictates of health, optimization and
performance comes to resemble mere survival. It lacks splendour, sovereignty,
intensity. The Roman satirist Juvenal expressed this well when he spoke of
'losing the reasons to live for the sake of staying alive'".
Is there not something of the Timor
mortis conturbat me in this line from Juvenal? Timorousness is certainly as
near to us as any of the more virtuous responses to the crisis. In stark
opposition to the splendour and intensity of ancient rituals, the pandemic
offers only empty rituals, rituals of stasis which tie the practitioner to the
present as a state of fear and constant threat. As such, the characteristic utility
of religious and cultic practices for making life more bearable is absent. Instead,
every vigorous scrub with the alcohol gel or hasty fumble for the mask on reaching
the threshold of a shop is a reminder of the unknowable evil which now hangs over the everyday.
“The enemy, the virus, is always
present and must be fought unceasingly and without any possible truce. The
Christian religion also knew similar totalitarian tendencies, but they
concerned only some individuals—in particular, monks—who chose to put their
entire existence under the emblem “pray unceasingly.” Medicine as religion
takes up this Pauline precept and, at the same time, reverses it: where monks
gathered together in convents to pray constantly, now the cult must be
practiced even more assiduously, but while remaining separated and at a
distance”.
Again the spectre of Schmitt hangs over this passage, as the evocation
of absolute enmity makes clear. Perhaps this is unavoidable, as it is true
that from the beginning much of the political messaging around the pandemic has
been couched in terms of war and military struggle against a foreign invader.
There are, however, dangerous consequences to propagandising in this way. In an
atmosphere of fear and uncertainty the cult becomes a means of organising this
generalised enmity, opening the way for politically managed ostracism and
othering. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the increasingly punitive
actions being directed against the unvaccinated. A historical example is
instructive here. In the 14th century, partly in response to the Black Death, a
popular phenomenon which came to be known as The Flagellant Movement appeared in
Northern and Central Europe. Processions of ordinary people would perform
public acts of penitence, most notably by whipping themselves in the hope of
cleansing their sins or earning mercy from whatever ill was afflicting their
community. During the plague in Europe these zealous groups would lead the
persecutions against marginalised communities, accusing them of lacking piety
and being the cause of the disease. Jews were especially targeted. Pope Clement
VI officially condemned them in a bull of October 20, 1349.
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14th Century depiction of a a procession of Flagellants
|
One does not have to stretch the imagination far to see a parallel in
the way politicians and the media have whipped up resentment against apparent
rule breakers and unvaccinated persons. Even to question the efficacy of
lockdowns and other modern penitential methods is to invite scorn for a lack of
piety. As for modern flagellants; double maskers, ostentatious social
distancers and vaccine eulogists, all tend to be quick to demand harsh action
against those who resist the cult, even if only in thought. Other Medieval
methods of disease prevention which have seen a revival include amulets and
charms (masks and health passports) and despite the theory of miasmas having
long been superseded we nevertheless have seen the practice of fumigating “bad
air” make a return, notably in classrooms full of freezing children.
The historian Norman F. Cantor associates modern explanations for
plague with a rational synchronic method (we might also say non-teleological),
whereas the Medievals viewed the plague diachronically and told stories. It is
perhaps too optimistic to conclude this latter mode of explanation has been
consigned to the past. We are now overly familiar with stories from both the
conspiratorial side and the so-called followers of science as to the ultimate
meaning of the pandemic (sins of the Chinese fishmongers anyone?). If the modern scientific synchronic
explanation were sufficient, why do we need a story about the evil of the
unvaccinated to explain the failure of our containment strategies?; just as
during medieval times Europeans scapegoated Jews, women accused of witchcraft,
and those lacking in piety for the disease? The millenarianism which
accompanied the reaction to the Black Death is mirrored in explanations for Covid
rooted in ecological exploitation and climate collapse. The virus entered a
world (well, the West really) already gripped by eschatological fervour.
We have long become accustomed to the cult of health and "body
fascism" through the media's veneration of youth and the now commonplace
desire amongst citizens of the most developed economies to use medical technology
as a way of modifying the corporeal form they were given, in pursuit of some
ideal, often just the latest trend pushed by digital influencers. Diet fads, mass
gym membership, body shaming, cosmetic surgery, supplement addiction, performance enhancing
drugs; all of these are tributaries running into the torrent of health terror
which we are now swimming in. For transhumanists and post-modern gnostics the
pandemic is just one more sign that it's time we jettisoned Brother Donkey.
Does this amount to evidence of medicine being treated as a religion?
One of the commonplaces attributed to religious belief is that it gives you a
story about how the world is, allows you to face living in a universe governed
by irreducible uncertainty. Agamben himself once offered a provisional definition
of religion as a form of social ordering centred around the sacred. There is
also a fundamental epistemological side to this. Adhering to a rule, even an
entirely arbitrary one, can function like a founding gesture, akin to drawing a
line in the sand, and can have the effect of dispelling uncertainty for the one
who obeys. Here we might reflect on the role played by the increasingly discredited
epidemiological modelling used repeatedly to justify government restrictions. As
Carlo Caduff noted in his work on "pandemic prophesy", apocalyptic
scenarios cover over the uncertainty inherent in the crisis, instead presenting
a situation governed by the pure necessity to act. This has the effect of
securing legitimacy for the governing power to act maximally without the need
to justify itself as to alternative courses. The fear this produces in the
population similarly converts contingency into necessity, rendering them
governable.
If medicine has taken on the character of a religion then this
represents a corruption of medicine which can only be detrimental to the public
good. Witness the wholesale abandonment of comprehensive public health during
the pandemic and the enthusiastic support for lockdowns and other measures
which raise fighting the virus to the zenith, while ignoring everything else
worthwhile in life. An excellent article in the BMJ in 2020 made just this
case. This week I've read that several hundred thousand cancer screening
appointments were missed in the UK during the lockdowns, likely resulting in
many missed diagnoses and a reduction in health outcomes for cancer
sufferers.
“Like capitalism and unlike
Christianity, the medical religion does not offer the prospect of salvation and
redemption. On the contrary, the recovery which it seeks can only be
provisional, since the evil God, the virus, cannot be eliminated once and for all,
but mutates continually and assumes ever new, presumably more dangerous, forms.
Epidemic, as the etymology of the term suggests (demos is in Greek the people
as a political body and polemos epidemios is in Homer the name for civil war)
is above all a political concept, which is preparing to become the new terrain
of world politics—or non-politics”.
Could the present cultic status of medicine and health practices be a
temporary phenomenon rather than the gestalt
switch which Agamben claims here? This is not the first time he has written
on modern medical technology. He devoted a quite chilling chapter of Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life
to the consequences of life support machines on our understanding of death,
notably shifting it from the cessation of the pulmonary function onto so-called
brain death.
There is no more ghoulish example of the end-point of sacralising bare
biological life under the reign of technology than the body of a brain-dead
individual kept nominally “alive” indefinitely by life-support machines while
relatives - for religious reasons - will not allow the earthly remains to pass
away. Agamben makes the point that this technologically suspended death
realises in practice the abstraction wrought by modernity between the biological
existence of human beings, and their social, emotional and cultural existence.
Modern science and medicine direct their interventions upon the former, with
the latter either being ignored completely or considered an epiphenomenon of
biological systems, and thus themselves calculable and potentially malleable by
medico-scientific means. The pandemic has seen this abstraction applied
vigorously as societies across the globe have been reduced to the level of base
productive systems; an ant hill or battery farm, which must be managed so to
preserve biological productive capacity at the expense of all else.
Perhaps then we might better understand the sudden appearance of this
"cult of medicine" as having its conditions of possibility in other
pre-existing discourses? Rather than medicine having found a new cultic
vocation by taking on the characteristics of a religion, could we not also
attribute the near hysterical permanent "celebration" of the cult to
the fact that biomedical sciences have been radicalised through historical contamination
with the Security State? Here too there is the Gnostic-Manichean duality of an
unceasing battle against implacable evil, which - in accordance with the logic
of worst cases - we can never be certain to have won. For how long now have we
suffered the cultic rituals of security as we go about our daily business? And how
totally has the equally pernicious cult of "risk management" polluted every
area of human life, leaving anything that escapes the calculation of risks as
either suspect or irrelevant.
It is not insignificant that pandemic preparedness was an outgrowth of
Cold War disaster planning. One way of understanding the management of the
pandemic (at least in its early stages) is as an application of so-called
"vital systems security", where the maintenance of certain national
systems (health services, supply chains, government functioning, etc), are
prioritised as vital to the survival of the country under existential threat.
This way of conceiving disaster planning developed primarily as a response to
the threat of nuclear attack, confirming both Agamben and Caduff's observations
regarding the overwhelming power of apocalyptic thinking within what are meant
to be cool headed and rational scientific approaches. But such an apocalyptic and
militarised framing is caustic to comprehensive public health. It's not really a
public health strategy at all. It's a brutal strategy of survival where the
religious logic of sacrifice and penitence are writ large. All the more so
owing to their appearance as emanations of our best science.
Whether the cult will persist and be integrated into a more permanent
regime of global health security is unclear. The flagellants disappeared,
though practices of penitence at times of crisis did not. There are also some
signs that the damage done by abandoning comprehensive public health is gaining
public awareness. Agamben's essay, like many of his interventions since the
start of the pandemic, is pregnant with pointers and portent, but lacking on
the detail which usually characterises his work. This doesn't mean there isn't
something there to think about.
