FROM HOMO SACER TO PULCINELLA: GIORGIO AGAMBEN'S «COMIC POLITICS» IN THE CONTEXT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

The article discusses the critical views of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben on the ethical and political consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic in a retrospective review of his political theory. First of all, it is about empirical confirmation in times of pandemic of theoretical hypotheses proposed by the Italian philosopher in the famous series of books by the Homo Sacer project. The comparative analysis shows how the concept of «bare life» (which in the first books of the project is personified by Agamben in the paradigmatic figure of Roman law homo sacer) is transformed into the definition of «asymptomatic patient» during the pandemic, and the sovereign power turns into an «administrative Leviathan» that keeps people in the «noose» of decrees and regulations. The way out of this crisis situation seems possible primarily through a change in the optics of seeing the paradigmatic figure of the bare life. Namely, through the transition from the tragic figure of Roman law, homo sacer, whom anyone could kill with impunity, to the figure of Pulcinella's commedia dell'arte, who cannot be killed. Contrary to the conventional view of Agamben's philosophy as a negative statement of crisis situations without suggesting possible solutions, the author seeks to show the positive nature of the Italian philosopher's thought, which offers a way out of political contradictions by turning to the non-political, in this case, to comedy.