The Appointment in Samarra: A New Use for Some Old Jokes
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SYMPOSIUM: COVID-19
The Appointment in Samarra: A New Use for Some Old Jokes Slavoj Žižek
Received: 28 June 2020 / Accepted: 3 August 2020 # Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Pty Ltd. 2020
Abstract The coronavirus epidemic is not just a biological phenomenon which affects humans: it is also a moment of a profound global and ecological crisis that includes many human and nonhuman actors. To confront the crisis, a radical philosophical change is needed, which penetrates to natural, economic, and cultural processes. The amassing of dictatorial powers of state apparatuses evoked by the pandemic highlights their basic impotence and the fact that the system as we know it cannot continue in its existing liberal-permissive form. While the final outcome is uncertain what is most probable is that a new barbarian capitalism will prevail: many old and weak will be sacrificed and let to die, workers will have to accept much lower standards of living, digital control of our lives will remain a permanent feature, and class distinctions will become much more than now a matter of life and death.
a human being. When he is cured—convinced that he is not a grain of seed but a man—and allowed to leave the hospital, he immediately comes back trembling with fear. There is a chicken outside the entrance door and he is afraid that it will eat him.
Keywords COVID-19 . Coronavirus . Pandemic . Ethics . Capitalism . Ecological crisis . Assemblage . Climate change
This virus version of the joke is based, of course, on the crucial fact that a virus doesn’t know anything (and also doesn’t not know anything) because it doesn’t dwell in the domain of knowledge at all. It is not an enemy trying to destroy us—it just self-reproduces with a blind automatism. Some leftists evoke another parallel: is capital also not a virus parasitizing on us humans, is it also not a blind mechanism bent on expanded selfreproduction in total indifference to our suffering? There is, however, a key difference at work here: capital is a virtual entity which doesn’t exist in reality independently of us. It only exists insofar as we, humans, participate in the capitalist process. As such, capital is a spectral entity: if we stop acting as if we believe in it (or, say, if a
In my past work, I used—at least a dozen times—the old joke about a man who believes himself to be a grain of seed and is taken to a mental institution where the doctors do their best to finally convince him that he is S. Žižek (*) University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana Slovenia e-mail: [email protected]
“Dear fellow,” says his doctor, “you know very well that you are not a grain of seed but a man.” “Of course, I know that,” replies the patient, “but does the chicken know it?” My Croat friend Dejan Kršić recently sent me a corona version of this joke: “Hello, my friend!” “Oh, hello, professor! Why are you wearing a mask? Two weeks ago, you were explaining all around that masks don’t protect against the virus?” “Yes, I know they don’t work, but maybe the virus doesn’t know it!”
Bioethical Inqu
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