Pandemic!. Slavoj Žižek

brutal solution is no longer acceptable today.

One can read the ongoing coronavirus epidemic as an inverted version of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1897). This is the story of how after Martians conquer the earth, the desperate hero-narrator discovers that all of them have been killed by an onslaught of earthly pathogens to which they had no immunity: “slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.” It is interesting to note that, according to Wells, the plot arose from a discussion with his brother Frank about the catastrophic effect of the British on indigenous Tasmanians. What would happen, he wondered, if Martians did to Britain what the British had done to the Tasmanians? The Tasmanians, however, lacked the lethal pathogens to defeat their invaders.⁴ Perhaps an epidemic which threatens to decimate humanity should be treated as Wells’s story turned around: the “Martian invaders” ruthlessly exploiting and destroying life on earth are we, humanity, ourselves; and after all devices of highly developed primates to defend themselves from us have failed, we are now threatened “by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth,” stupid viruses which just blindly reproduce themselves—and mutate.

We should of course analyze in detail the social conditions which made the coronavirus epidemic possible. Just think about the way, in today’s interconnected world, a British person meets someone in Singapore, returns to England, and then goes skiing to France, infecting there four others … The usual suspects are waiting in line to be questioned: globalization, the capitalist market, the transience of the rich. However, we should resist the temptation to treat the ongoing epidemic as something that has a deeper meaning: the cruel but just punishment of humanity for the ruthless exploitation of other forms of life on earth. If we search for such a hidden message, we remain premodern: we treat our universe as a partner in communication. Even if our very survival is threatened, there is something reassuring in the fact that we are punished, the universe (or even Somebody-out-there) is engaging with us. We matter in some profound way. The really difficult thing to accept is the fact that the ongoing epidemic is a result of natural contingency at its purest, that it just happened and hides no deeper meaning. In the larger order of things, we are just a species with no special importance.

Reacting to the threat posed by the coronavirus outbreak, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately offered help and coordination to the Palestinian authority—not out of goodness and human consideration, but for the simple fact that it is impossible to separate Jews and Palestinians there—if one group is affected, the other will inevitably also suffer. This is the reality which we should translate into politics—now is the time to drop the “America (or whoever else) First” motto. As Martin Luther King put it more than half a century ago: “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”

Notes

      1 1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/08/if-china-valued-free-speech-there-would-be-no-coronavirus-crisis.

      2 2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/11/coronavirus-expert-warns-infection-could-reach-60-of-worlds-population.

      3 3. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51413870.

      4 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds.