LIVING UNDER CORONAVIRUS CONDITIONS: BETWEEN “BARE LIFE” AND EVERYDAY PRACTICES
LIVING UNDER CORONAVIRUS CONDITIONS: BETWEEN “BARE LIFE” AND EVERYDAY PRACTICES

Summary/Abstract: The article is devoted to the analysis of life in the current situation from a biopolitical paradigm that vividly recalled itself in the context of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. The first part of the article is devoted to the problem of sovereignty as what determines the existence and functioning of the social order as such. Despite the fact that coronavirus casts doubt on stable ideas about sovereignty, the measures taken by the authorities of various states show that it will be more productive to correlate these measures with the classical theory of sovereignty, adding biopolitical optics to it. In this regard, the second part of the article focuses on clarifying the connection between sovereignty and proposed by Giorgio Agamben the concept of „bare life”, in which power and life constitute a biopolitical unity, and determines the position of modern man. The coronavirus pandemic actualized the thought of the Italian philosopher, and at the same time provoked a wide discussion among the philosophical community, during which Agamben's position caused a number of comments and observations. In the final part of the article, the author turns to the work of Michel de Certeau, which can be used as some kind of program that allows us to get away from biopolitical logic in the direction of a subject, who can control his own life. For this reason, attention is focused on the de Certeau's distinction between strategies and tactics, in other words, between the power of the sovereign and the cunning of the weak.

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