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Dormant ideological viruses

Book review written by Anders Dunker
Pandemic! Covid-19 Shakes the World
Forfatter: Slavoj Žižek
Forlag: OR Books (USA)
corona: Will a far more favorable ideological virus spread and hopefully infect us, the virus that makes us think of another society, beyond the nation state, a society that realizes itself as global solidarity and cooperation?

One striking experience the covid-19 pandemic has brought is that so many show a willingness to learn from the crisis. The public philosophers are also all on the track to interpret the signs of the times. About philosophyone is a means of both peace of mind and practicality orientering for the individual, it has also always had a greater ambition: to bring truths to the square that can change the human community.

If we understand "philosophy" as a term for our basics orientering in life, we are all going through a real philosophical revolution these days, says Slavoj Žižek in the little book Pandemic!. It is based on a series of articles he has written during the Quarantine, where he also reportedly indulged in lazy pleasures and Netflix Crime, occasionally sleepless nights characterized by a latent panic and pondering the future of the world.

Slavoj Zizek

From the very beginning, Žižek rejects a New Age version of the virus as a kind of messenger from the earth: the belief that the success of this parasite should be nature's own pantomime, a critical gesture or a warning addressed to us humans. The virus is a stupid mechanism that copies itself in a pointless way, says Žižek. It is a "biological caricature" of life's blind reproduction,. . .

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Anders Dunker
Philosopher. Regular literary critic in Ny Tid. Translator.

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