A Letter to Oliver Vogel

Alexander Garcia Düttmann

Translated by James Fontini

Dear Oliver,

Many years ago, the press you work for published a book of mine with the subtitle Thinking and Talking About a Virus. If I were to write about a virus again today, about this virus called corona, I would conceivably choose a similar subtitle, only slightly altered. The subtitle would read: “That a Virus Is Thought about and Spoken Of”. The first subtitle should indicate that the discourses emerging from the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) were indeed of different sorts, but nonetheless developed into specific discursive patterns, which in turn minimized the disparity. On the other hand, the second subtitle would indicate the presupposition of such a development, which is to say the power of the virus to generate discourses. To my eyes, the present is less characterized by the question of “How to think and talk about a virus?” than by the fact that a virus is thought about and spoken of so much, so incessantly, and so tirelessly.

For nothing has struck me more in the past few weeks or so than the endless procession and parade of scientists, experts, researchers, doctors, of academics, artists and politicians, of sociologists, philosophers, political scientists, historians, cultural workers, who – one behind the other, one after the other, one before the next – constantly express their thoughts on the new pandemic to the public in print, on TV, and on the internet. Everyone knows something about the meaning of this pandemic and its repercussions, whether or not it announces the end of capitalism, allows for the emergence of new social solidarity, or ratifies the general state of exception that reduces life to bare life. It is as if this march of the minds – or ghost train? – was already in motion before one could even speak of an epidemic, let alone a pandemic.

While virologists work to develop a vaccine as quickly as possible – a medicine that will stop the pandemic – in overcrowded hospitals and clinics it is not merely a matter of life and death but of decisions of life and death that must be made quickly, as the next decision already imposes itself. Personnel are pushed to the limits of what is doable and what is reasonable. Protective masks, ventilators, even beds, are lacking. When this unpredictable, almost implausible, and immensely accelerated activity doubles in the superstructure, a communication explosion occurs.

Yet does not this doubling, the hectic drive and meddling of those who reflect on the crisis, also contain a comic dimension? It is as if it were also a crowning of the coronavirus,[1] mirroring or forestalling its virulence and unstoppability, prostrating respectfully before it while simultaneously warding it off, covering over the traces it has not yet left behind. If self-reflection was once tied to the end, if it was once an attempt to understand an experience or a challenge one had experimented, it now comes before the start, before one has actually experienced something.

When a total mobilization of spirit takes place, one that is acknowledgement and ostracism in one, a being-caught-up-in and a not-letting-near, when all minds are ready and willing to fulfill a task, it is hardly surprising that people reach for ways of thinking and speaking that are easily recognizable and provide something of a quick, calming platitude. It does not matter how apocalyptic they may sound or how much they may call for pause and mindfulness. Some seek new guidelines and directives for business to carry on as smoothly as possible, without getting too bogged down or delayed. Others invoke creativity, which, in order to justify its returns, must prove itself, especially in critical times.

It seems to me, then, that the only ones who can respond to the pandemic are those for whom the comic aspect I mentioned triggers an astonished laughter. Without such laughter, I fear, there is a lurking danger of the pandemic contributing only to the consolidation of social tendencies whose momentum it brings to a standstill, at least on the face of it. Let me ask you this: What sort of social distancing, if any, does astonished laughter practice?

Yours,

Alex

Bad Nauheim, 25 March 2020

[This was originally published in the magazine Hundertvierzehn]

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Alexander García Düttmann teaches philosophy and aesthetics at University of the Arts in Berlin. He is the author of numerous books, including At Odds with AIDS. Talking and Thinking about a Virus (1996), Philosophy of Exaggeration (2004), Visconti: Insights into Flesh and Blood (2008), and, most recently, Love Machine. The Origin of the Work of Art (2018). He is also the editor of Jacques Derrida’s lecture course Théorie et pratique (2017) and appears as an actor in Albert Serra’s new film Liberté (2019).

James Fontini is working on a PhD about Heidegger and topology at University of the Arts in Berlin.

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[1] Düttmann writes “dem Coronavirus noch einmal die Krone aufsezten”, a reference in part to the morphology that gives coronaviruses their name. The phrase “etwas die Krone aufsetzen” can also refer to “crowning” or “capping something off” in the sense of concluding or bringing to its end–Tranlator’s note.

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