Le spectre de la biopolitique à l'ère de la pandémie

Among the philosophical interventions about the coronavirus, were the voices of Giorgio Agamben and Jean-Luc Nancy which engaged one another in a lively debate, providing this study with its sources and circumscribing the limited field of its reflection. By reconstructing the arguments of both sides, our analysis reveals that the paradigm of biopolitics to which Agamben refers while explaining the true nature of the viral epidemic may be criticized as deterministic and totalizing. Nancy points to a “neo-viralism” barely distinguishable from neo-liberalism. However, the philosophically substantial question of freedom appears to oppose these two thinkers, who otherwise come from the same philosophical family and are among the most important voices of their generation. Accordingly, the very idea of freedom becomes the focal point of their dispute – a “freedom” in whose name many protesters during the corona pandemic declared themselves against measures limiting individual freedom.