Foucault, biopolitics, COVID pandemic, Agamben, parrhesia/ truth-telling
By our days it is evident that Michel Foucault is simply the most influential, most widely used and debated contemporary thinker. Though he passed away almost four decades ago, reference to and discussion of his works is continuously only on the increase, though he isn’t and never was an establishment figure, not even in the sense of the establishment governing critical theory: throughout his working life he remained a solitary figure, going against standard, established, dominant discourses. For all these reasons, it is particularly relevant to see in what way one could approach the recent COVID phenomenon through the lens of Foucault’s discussion of biopolitics, hoping to find a perspective outside the beaten tracks, where – strangely enough – most critical theorists lined up tightly behind the official policies and their justification. In this, the article will follow, among others, Giorgio Agamben, one of the most important followers of Foucault’s related work.