Intellectual Community Discusses the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Coronavirus Debate as a New Cultural Phenomenon

Abstract

This article examines the phenomenon of the recent debate about the COVID-19 pandemic, in which leading intellectuals of our time have become involved. The special position taken by intellectuals today is reflected in the sharpness of their statements on the pandemic and their attempts to distance themselves from the official position on coronavirus infection taken by most doctors, virologists, and politicians. Using the channels of information available to them – journals, TV channels, Internet sites – intellectuals tend to view the pandemic as a global crisis capable of radically changing the lives of entire societies and humanity. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben speaks of COVID-19 as an emergency invented by the authorities, depriving humans of all the attributes of existence except “naked life”. The Slovenian thinker Slavoj Žižek proclaims the thesis that the answer to the coronavirus can only be a renewed communism. The Russian political scientist Sergey Kurginyan interprets COVID-19 as a global systemic disaster with political, economic, anthropological, and other aspects.