Pandemic! Covid-19 Shakes the World by Slavoj Zizek

 Pandemic!

Covid-19 Shakes the World by Slavoj Zizek is a book released by Polity Books treating the current period (first phase and wave, Italy was in lockdown) we are all experiencing. Social distancing, an enemy we can't touch but that it is incredibly visible and.."alive" in bodies of people and that it is causing a lot of death and sufferance.

A pandemic means a shock: a social, political, economical, psychological shock, because the rules are not anymore dictated by a government of a state, but by a virus and the behavior of the citizens. There is a constant, enormous, fear, panic, uncertainty in a pandemic time.

As reflects Zizek there won't be any return to normality, but the new normality that will be built under the maceries of this pandemic will be for sure a new one.

If we won't do that, a new barbarism will start to take place.

And...Another question: why America and Europe were so unprepared although rich countries to this shock, when previsions said that a new pandemic would have affected the world soon? 

Zizek starting from the experience of Li Wenliang, the doctor of 37 years who denounced the silence of chinese authorities regarding the severe outbreak of COVID-19 and his following death concludes with a phrase of Martin Luther King: "We maybe have all come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now." 

It is true: Covid-19 doesn't respect anyone; it kills the rich and the poor, the beauty and the ugly. Everyone. And it becomes incredibly strong, joyous and happy when people spend time together.

That one is its strength. Only that one. In opposite case, it would remain a solitary virus, without consistency. But this virus knows something: that people can't stay always all alone and there, joyously he kills and let us suffer.

This one is not a healthy society, adds Zizek, but a society pretty tired, by dues, by that being masters and slaves at the same time, without adding that the globalization is the main cause of social distress. 

COVID-19 pandemic is keeping this state of things pretty worrying;  not everyone stay at home for smart-working: there is a large part of population who is forced to go outside, in an unsafe world where the risk, at the moment, of catching the virus is very high.

The situation of the world is not the happiest one at the moment: there is not just COVID-19 but climate changes as well! and we are experiencing phaenomenon always seen in the world but with more prepotency: floods, hurricanes, quakes and other different disasters.

Our perception of body is changed: for reasons that we all know we must avoid to touch our face, nose, ears, cleaning hands compulsively and wherever we go, we can't shake hand anymore, we can't hug, we can't kiss anyone. We can't let show to anyone our affection for prudency.

We learned to control and discipline ourselves writes Zizek.

These past years, reflects Zizek, only the internet and its explosion presented us, in particular with Windows the problematic of viruses of various sorta. If in our part of the world we experienced only online stress, in other part of the world the explosion of COVID-19 has been lived as another "plague" close to other ones, (certain countries are effected by more than an epidemic per time) in particular in Africa.

The explosion of places where people have fun all together, so parks at theme, or also cruise ships let us rethink at the system created in our past society...A society where people had to enjoy all the fun together.

Pandemic's psychological reactions have always been absolutely similar in every epidemic. There hasn't been a great differentiation in terms of behavior if we look at the past and we read what happened, and the mirror we observes today.

There is denial, anger, bargaining, depression and at the end acceptance. 

In the first stage people can't recognize that there is a problem (I met several people in that phase and they are now the most worried ones), there is anger, when it is understandable that the peril is close to us, but also the dream that the problem can be attenuated or sorted out, for then experiencing depression and acceptance.

A new form of living must be created, helped by a new Communism tells Zizek, if not, Zizek writes a future could be this one:  "We stay at home, work on our computers, communicate through video-conferences, exercise on a machine in the corner of our home office, occasionally masturbate in front of a screen displaying hard core sex , and got food delivery never seeing other human beings in person." Scaring.

For sure panic is a condition that we started to know well. My mother is taking some drops every night because the entire situation scared her to death although we live in a countryside.

The fear of the unknown; the idea that what it is told can be a lie, or just, the enormity of the problem in particular for people who remembers the last Second World War Conflict and thinks that this virus, keeping people isolated, is worse than a war.

But... After all...Isn't it a war this one?

A war that can't be defeated egoistically but through global solidariety and cooperation "in the interest and survival of of all of each of us" writes Zizek.

The situation experienced in the first wave,  when in hospitals sometimes nurses and doctors chose who put in ICU "removing" from the list the oldest, and sickest ones. Isn't this one a situation that potentially can open up the space for immense corruption, asks Zizek.

 

Italy has been in a general lockdown, and that lockdown brought things under control for circa two months. Virus circulated but was more lazy thanks to the general lockdown.

It is a historical fact this one: for killing or for put under control a state, a city during an epidemic the only real measure that can save wagons of existences are lockdowns.

China remembers still the lessons learned when Watson closed an entire village in 1917, affected by a weird flu, dedicating to him an hospital.

Zizek speaks of the elite, living well and maybe like the protagonists of the Decameron by Boccaccio who lived somewhere for escaping the new wave of plague, telling to each other stories of various genre for passing the time.

Sure: during a pandemic normality is strongly altered. We live, also when the peak is reached in a constant situation of peril; there is not anymore the relaxation of the past; because we still know that the virus is there.

A virus: what is a virus if not a parasite, write Zizek? An entity close to a vampire, a parasite, yes! It couldn't live if he wouldn't enter in the body of someone replicating itself creating in most cases important illnesses or the death. It doesn't exist and exists, prepotently; it can be classified a "silly virus" because it can be killed cleaning hands with alcohol, cleaning surfaces with simplicity, it doesn't resist high temperatures because and of course, it doesn't enter, as said one day by a virologist through the walls of the houses. So, you must catch it somewhere meeting someone.

I smiled when I read what Zizek wrote: he said he would have wanted to catch the virus so that the uncertainty would be over. It happens the same to me. 

I wanted to see if I catched COVID-19 so that I would have been immune but no, I did a sierologic exam and it was negative.

And yes, I know what it means experiencing nightmares of various sorta, COVID related. You dream virologists, politicians, doctors, you dream COVID, in general you are sick or other people are sick and so what to do?

But I find, for example more simple at the moment sleeping, because dreams changed for good after a while; I find more difficult  coping with the day, when from the beginning to the end the main mantra is COVID-19 and who is sick today, and what will happen tomorrow? I tell the truth: that the fact Italy reopens put me is a big stress. Last year we were in lockdown and I experienced great relaxation because I knew that we were safe. This year is the opposite...

So, you imagine when you will return to the city, jumping here and there, avoiding human contacts, staying safe....It's not a joke. Plus of course, the uncertainty of the future, how this society will change, because I am honest, I hadn't seen a great society in the pre-pandemic world. No.

This pandemic is a medical, economic and psychological emergence.

Kant once said speaking to the laws of a state: "Obey, but think, maintain the freedom of thought."

To Zizec passing through the public is crucially important, because we understood that the past system built couldn't be inclusive with everyone and important decisions must be taken for avoid any kind of social intense di-stress that could bring people to desperation.

Transfunctionalitation is an extreme measure for helping societies and privates; it permits to the economy running and to prevent extreme poverty and starvation.

Beautiful book, you'll read it in a few hours. There is a new book Pandemic 2, written by the same Zizek. Stay tuned. I will post the review I hope in a couple of weeks.

Highly recommended.

I thank Polity Books for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori