War and Peace Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, February 23, 2021 We should take seriously the thesis, all too often repeated by governments, according to which humanity and nations are currently in a state of war. Needless to say, such a thesis serves to legitimise the state of exception with its drastic limitations on the freedom of movement and its absurd terminologies such as “curfew”, which are hard to justify otherwise. The bond that binds governmental powers to war is, however, more intimate and consubstantial. The fact is that war is something which they cannot in any way durably do without. In his novel Tolstoy opposes peace, where mankind more or less freely follows its desires, feelings and thoughts and which appears to him as the only reality, to the abstraction and mystification of war, where all seems to be dragged by an inexorable necessity. And in his fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena, Lorenzetti depicts a city at peace whose inhabitants move freely according their occupations and enjoyments, while in the foreground girls dance holding each other’s hands. Although the fresco is usually entitled Good Government, such a condition, woven as it is by small daily events of the common life and by the desires of each, is actually ungovernable for power in the long run. However much it may be subjected to limits and controls of any sorts, it in fact tends by its nature to escape calculations, plannings and rules — or, at least, this is what power secretly fears. This can also be expressed by saying that history, without which power is not ultimately conceivable, is strictly supportive with war, whereas life in peace is by definition without history. By entitling her novel La Storia (History), in which the story of some simple creatures is opposed to the wars and catastrophes that mark the pubic vicissitudes of the twentieth century, Elsa Morante had something like this in mind. This is why powers that want to rule the world must sooner or later resort to war, no matter whether it be real or artfully simulated. And since in the state of peace human life tends to depart from any historical dimension, no wonder that governments tirelessly remind us that the war to the virus marks the beginning of a new historical epoch, in which nothing will be as before. And many among those who blindfold themselves not to see the situation of unfreedom where they have fallen, they just accept it because they are convinced, not without a touch of pride, that they are entering — after almost seventy years of peaceful life, i.e. without history — in a new era. Although, as is all too obvious, it will be an epoch of servitude and sacrifices, in which all that makes life worth living will have to suffer mortifications and restrictions, they willingly submit to it, because they stolidly believe that in this way they found that meaning of life which they inadvertently lost in peace. It is possible, however, that the war to the virus, which appeared to be an ideal device, far more adaptable to the needs of any governments and far more easy to manage than a true war, may get out of their hands, like any war. And, perhaps, at that point, if it is not too late, mankind will once again seek that ungovernable peace which it has so unwisely abandoned. |
(English translation by Nobody’s Perfect)
Detail from Allegory of Good Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, 1338–40. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |