Lockdown: A Commentary

Gian Giacomo Fusco

doi:10.18778/0208-6069.96.05

Authors

Gian Giacomo Fusco University of Kent; Uczelnia Łazarskiego https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6977-2832

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/0208-6069.96.05

Keywords:

lockdown, COVID-19, pandemic, state of exception, security

Abstract

The Collins dictionary has elected lockdown as its word-of-the-yearn 2020. Defined as “the imposition of stringent restrictions on travel, social interaction and access to public spaces”, decided by governments “to mitigate the spread of COVID-19”, for Collins’ lexicographers “lockdown” took the top spot because it is a unifying experience for billions of people across the world, who have had, collectively, to play their part in combating the spread of the virus. Faced with the unknown of a brand-new virus, governments all over the world reacted in a rather familiar way, by suspending the normal flow of social life through the implementation of measures that are usually categorised as a state of exception. This article is a commentary that aims at placing the practice of lockdown (as a governmental administrative measure) in the context of the theory of state and government. To the extent that emergencies are always revelatory, this paper will argue that the state of exception – of which the lockdown is a sub-category – in displaying state’s sovereign power is exposing the radical impotence in which it is grounded, and from which it takes its ultimate meaning and function.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Agamben, Giorgio. 2001. “Security and Terror.” Theory & Event 5(4). https://doi.org/10.1353/tae.2001.0030
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/tae.2001.0030

Agamben, Giorgio. 2020. A che punto siamo? L’Epidemia come politica. Macerata: Quodlibet.
Google Scholar

Agamben, Giorgio. 2020a. “Stato di Eccezione e Stato di Emergenza.” Quodlibet, July 30, 2020. https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-stato-di-eccezione-e-stato-di-emergenza [Accessed: 17 June 2021].
Google Scholar

Agamben, Giorgio. 2020b. “Due vocaboli infami.” Quodlibet, July 10, 2020. https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-due-vocaboli-infami [Accessed: 17 June 2021].
Google Scholar

Beck, Ulrich. 1992. The risk society. Towards a new modernity. London: Sage.
Google Scholar

Coccia, Emanuele. 2020. “Reversing the New Global Monasticism.” Semester, April 21, 2020. https://fallsemester.org/2020–1/2020/4/17/emanuele-coccia-escaping-the-global-monasticism [Accessed: 15 February 2021].
Google Scholar

D’Abramo, Flavio. Giulia Gandolfi. Gerardo Ienna. Pietro Daniel Omodeo. Charles Wolfe. 2021. “Political Epistemology of Pandemic Management.” MeFiSto. Medicina Filosofia Storia.
Google Scholar

De Cesare, Donatella. 2020. Virus sovrano? L’Asfissia capitalistica. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
Google Scholar

Foucault, Michel. 1998. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1: An Introduction. Translated by R Hurley. New York: Penguin.
Google Scholar

Foucault, Michel. 2003. Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974–1975. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Picador.
Google Scholar

Foucault, Michel. 2009. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1977–1978. Translated by Graham Burchell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Google Scholar

Fusco, Gian Giacomo. 2020. “Exception, Fiction, Performativity.” In States of Exception: Law, History, Theory. 15–33. Edited by Gian Giacomo Fusco, Cosmin Cercel, Simon Lavis. Abingdon–New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429022296-1
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429022296-1

Hamilton, Alexander. 2008. The Federalist Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar

Hobbes, Thomas. 1998. Leviathan. Edited by J.C.A. Gaskin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar

Hunt Botting, Eileen. 2020. “A novel (coronavirus) reading of Hobbes’s Leviathan.” History of European Ideas. 47(1): 33–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2020.1792059
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2020.1792059

Iacob, Anisia. 2020. “The Question of Technology and Media in the Current Pandemic.” Saeculum 50(2): 11–18.
Google Scholar

Kant, Immanuel. 2006. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated by Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Kierkegaard, Søren. 1983. Fear and Trembling: Repetition. Translated by Howard V. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar

Lamola, M. John. 2020. “Thomas Hobbes in the Time of Coronavirus.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 9(4): 72–75.
Google Scholar

Luhmann, Niklas. 1993. Risk: A Sociological Theory. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Google Scholar

Ojakangas, Mika. 2012. “Potentia absoluta et potentia ordinata Dei: on the theological origins of Carl Schmitt’s theory of constitution.” Continental Philosophy Review 45: 505–517. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-012-9233-x
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-012-9233-x

Randi, Eugenio. 1987. Il Sovrano e l’Orologiaio. Due immagini di Dio nel dibattito sulla «Potentia absoluta» fra XIII e XIV secolo di Eugenio Randi. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.
Google Scholar

Roeser, Sabine. Rafaela Hillerbrand. Per Sandin. Martin Peterson. Eds. 2012. Handbook of Risk Theory Epistemology, Decision Theory, Ethics, and Social Implications of Risk. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1433-5
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1433-5

Santi, Raffaella. 2020. “Politics and Salus Populi: Hobbes and the Sovereign as Physician of the State.” Philosophy Study 10(11): 693–702. https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5313/2020.11.003
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5313/2020.11.003

Schmitt, Carl. 2005. Political Theology. Four Chapter on the Concept of Sovereignty. Translated by George Schwab. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226738901.001.0001
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226738901.001.0001

Traversino Di Cristo, Massimiliano. 2018. “The Classic Age of the Distinction between God’s Absolute and Ordered Power.” Franciscan Studies 76(1): 207–266. https://doi.org/10.1353/frc.2018.0007
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/frc.2018.0007

Tushnet, Mark. 1996. “Defending the Indeterminacy Thesis.” Quinnipiac Law Review 16: 339–356.
Google Scholar

Ventura, Raffaele Alberto. 2020. Radical Choc. Ascesa e caduta dei competenti. Torino: Einaudi.
Google Scholar

Zagrebelsky, Gustavo. 2020. Il Mondo dopo la fine del Mondo. Roma–Bari: Laterza.
Google Scholar

Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. https://www.btg-bestellservice.de/pdf/80201000.pdf [Accessed: 17 June 2021].
Google Scholar

Italian Constitution. https://www.senato.it/documenti/repository/istituzione/costituzione_inglese.pdf [Accessed: 17 June 2021].
Google Scholar

Spanish Constitution. https://www.boe.es/legislacion/documentos/ConstitucionINGLES.pdf [Accessed: 17 June 2021].
Google Scholar