Where Are We Now?

In this volume, the renowned Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has collected all of his fierce, passionate, and deeply personal interventions regarding the current health emergency. Alongside and beyond accusations, these texts variously reflect upon the great transformation affecting Western democracies. In the name of biosecurity and health, the model of bourgeois democracy—together with its rights, parliaments, and constitutions—is everywhere surrendering to a new despotism where citizens seem to accept unprecedented limitations to their freedoms. This leads to the urgency of the volume’s title: Where Are We Now? For how long will we accept living in a constantly extended state of exception, the end of which remains impossible to see?

In this volume, the renowned Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has collected all of his fierce, passionate, and deeply personal interventions regarding the current health emergency. Alongside and beyond accusations, these texts variously reflect upon the great transformation affecting Western democracies. In the name of biosecurity and health, the model of bourgeois democracy—together with its rights, parliaments, and constitutions—is everywhere surrendering to a new despotism where citizens seem to accept unprecedented limitations to their freedoms. This leads to the urgency of the volume’s title: Where Are We Now? For how long will we accept living in a constantly extended state of exception, the end of which remains impossible to see?