The pandemic as the engine of an international care-based security regime: a critique to Giorgio Agamben

Abstract

Although Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben did not write a book using his best-known categories of analysis to comment on the Covid-19 pandemic, his theoretical position on the subject is well known – and controversial. Since February 2020, when the pandemic became a global threat and restrictive health measures were adopted by governments, Agamben has published scathing articles against such measures. Under the allegation that the pandemic would be an “invention” to justify the paradigm of the state of exception, he continued to criticize what many jurists consider legitimate actions and policies to protect public health; he even said that vaccination and the “green pass” instituted in European countries would be deliberate ways to create second-class citizens. Despite the claims of an influential intellectual such as Giorgio Agamben, the authors argue that the pandemic created the basis for the constitution of a legal cooperation regime in the field of health, which corresponds to a process of consolidation of an international care-based security regime rather than a state of exception.