ruin OP wrote on February 9, 2021 at 3:07 PM

Reply to comment by aaaaarg in A Guide to Lock-Down-Critical Anarchist Writing | anarchistnews.org by ruin

Thanks for the links.

Of these, I think I lean most closely to Agamben’s take that Robinson writes on.

I tend to see any support of a furthering of the security state as authoritarian at best and totalitarian at worst.

This isn’t simply a factor of social distancing and closures, but also a deeper psychological alienation furthered by the medical response to the virus as a villainous foe to be overcome. A discrete threat with a discrete medical solution. This type of thought continues us down the problematic road of humanist anthropocentric thought that isolates and subjugates us in the first place.

Agamben’s piece on medicine sums up the religious aspects of the current approach in very few words and is well worth a read.

Agamben: Medicine as Religion

I too work in what is considered an essential business and I had a fucking miserable case of covid. I know a couple folks who have passed, and I take the illness seriously.

While don’t fault anyone for doing what they feel is necessary to stay healthy, I also won’t advocate for or support authoritarian mandates concerning human bodily autonomy.

aaaaarg wrote on February 9, 2021 at 7:43 PM

I guess the point I want to reiterate is that I don't see the lockdown as a greater incursion into bodily autonomy than what proceeded it, sometimes my body is forced into the work place sometimes it is forced out. None of it involves autonomy. The state always has the ability to choose what it does with or to our bodies.

A lot of these articles seem to focus on the rules rather than the possibilities or practicalities. While it is not legal to do so, I visit my family more frequently and in a more relaxed fashion in lockdown than I do outside of it. I am also fortunate enough that my wages have been subsidized by a government scheme so I am receiving enough money to survive (if not much else) but with no accountability. This again offers more bodily autonomy than being in work.

And yeah, even having said the above, it's still fucking shit. The pandemic seems to have intensified the worst aspects of capitalism. It feels like a preview to the end of civilization.

TW asks

what does that mean for our praxis?

Probably what it always has, finding ways to do what we want against the will of the state.

ruin OP wrote on February 9, 2021 at 11:03 PM

I see your point and I’d wager that as TW had mentioned, people in different locales will have very different experiences regarding “lockdowns”.

I’m in a very rural area (just a few hundred people) so things haven’t changed much up here. On the other hand when I travel to a very large liberal city nearby for work it’s nearly a ghost town and everyone is paranoid. My folks live in the southern US and it’s been as if nothing ever happened...