zizec and the covid-19 pandemic

31 Jan 2021

Here’s some notes from my reading of PANDEMIC!: COVID-19 Shakes The World where Zizec argues that there will be no back to normal, hence we need to establish a new form of communism or else we’ll see some barbarism “with a human face” takes place.

• We never learn from history, this pandemic will not necessarily make us wiser or anything
• Idea that if China would value free speech there would be no pandemic OR we should extend our fights for human rights accross the globe to prevent new catastrophes
• We not only need strong states to fight what is to come, but also need a trusting relationship between states and their people (especially in this age of prolifering fake news)
• Some wants to see the pandemic as punishement from nature, but the crisis doesn’t necessarily have a meaning, and it will probably be long
• Chapter 2 covers the idea of the self-exploited worker, where creative and intellectuals now “own” the mean of their production, nonetheless the division in type of workers (the intellectual/creative, the caregiver, the manufacturor) and how the caregiving jobs were somewhat downplayed didn’t resonate with me but anyway, those three types of workers experience different kind of fatigue respectively to their category of work was Zizek’s point
• Concept of capitalism animisn is interesting, i.e “treating social phenomenona such as markets or financial capitals as living entities” (p.33)
• Metaphor from kung-fu move Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique to illustrate that, once the pandemic will be over, Europe (and probably the world) will probably turns into shambles
• The conclusion of the book is that maybe we are already seeing the emergence of this new form of communism he is advocating for, namely through pandemic relief measures, this new form communism he suggests we could call “disaster communism” to echo Naomi Klein’s disaster capitalism