Izoláció vagy rokonulás?
Isolation or Kinship?

The analysis of the coronavirus from an ecophilosophical approach

Summary/Abstract: Our present coronavirus crisis caused “the state of exception” in two respects. On the one hand, as Giorgio Agamben points out, social restrictions introduced in the name of protection created the state of exception in the Schmidtian sense, as in a case of wars. At the same time, this state of exception is not only about the pandemic but about an inherent element of the present regime of biopower that lays the foundations of the capitalist mode of production. The fact that the virus could appear globally and could become a part of our everyday lives is related essentially to these agents above. As the economy uses more and more areas for production, it pushes the natural habitat of animals closer to the regions of the human population, resulting in forced and unexpected amalgamations among the two spheres. However, the coronavirus could be considered as a state of exception in another sense as well. The uncertainty it creates forces us, both at the individual and at the societal level, to reflect on what had been “normal” so far. Therefore, we could regard the virus as an opportunity that makes us think about what we have to do, not only against the pandemic itself, but also against the ecological crisis that underpins the virus. The study attempts to describe the underlying social and economic factors of the virus, while it emphasizes that if we could regard it as an event, we have the potential to initiate societal change.

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