Jean-Luc Nancy - An All-Too-Human Virus

1 Cover

2 Title Page An All-Too-Human Virus Jean-Luc Nancy Translated by Cory Stockwell, Sarah Clift and David Fernbach polity

3 Copyright Originally published in French as Un trop humain virus © Bayard Editions, 2020 This English edition © Polity Press, 2022 Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 101 Station Landing Suite 300 Medford, MA 02155, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5023-4 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021939031 The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

4 Publisher’s Note Publisher’s Note The Preface, Prologue, Chapters 1 , 4 , and 7 and the Appendices were translated by Cory Stockwell. Chapters 3 , 5 , 6 , 8 , and 9 were translated by Sarah Clift. Chapter 2 was translated by David Fernbach. The material included in the Prologue was added to the English edition of this book.

5 Preface

6 Prologue

7 1. An All-Too-Human Virus

8 2. ‘Communovirus’

9 3. Let Us Be Infants

10 4. Evil and Power

11 5. Freedom

12 6. Neoviralism

13 7. To Free Freedom

14 8. The Useful and the Useless

15 9. Still All Too Human Experience Self-Sufficiency Bioculture Equality The Point

16 Appendix 1. Interview with Nicolas Dutent

17 Appendix 2. From the Future to the Time to Come: The Revolution of the Virus, with Jean-François Bouthors

18 Sources of the Texts

19 End User License Agreement

1 Cover

2 Table of Contents

3 Title Page

4 Copyright

5 Publisher’s Note Publisher’s Note The Preface, Prologue, Chapters 1 , 4 , and 7 and the Appendices were translated by Cory Stockwell. Chapters 3 , 5 , 6 , 8 , and 9 were translated by Sarah Clift. Chapter 2 was translated by David Fernbach. The material included in the Prologue was added to the English edition of this book.

6 Preface

7 Prologue

8 Begin Reading

9 Appendix 1. Interview with Nicolas Dutent

10 Appendix 2. From the Future to the Time to Come: The Revolution of the Virus, with Jean-François Bouthors

11 Sources of the Texts

12 End User License Agreement

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Jean-Luc Nancy

Translated by Cory Stockwell, Sarah Clift and David Fernbach

polity

Originally published in French as Un trop humain virus © Bayard Editions, 2020

This English edition © Polity Press, 2022

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

101 Station Landing

Suite 300

Medford, MA 02155, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5023-4

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021939031

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website:

politybooks.com

The Preface, Prologue, Chapters 1, 4, and 7and the Appendices were translated by Cory Stockwell.

Chapters 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9were translated by Sarah Clift.

Chapter 2was translated by David Fernbach.

The material included in the Prologue was added to the English edition of this book.

1. The texts in this volume were assembled at the initiative of Suzanne Doppelt, for the publisher Bayard, in June 2020, at the (very provisional) end of the period of lockdown, and then of progressive opening, in France. The intention was to keep a record of the reactions to the event brought about by the numerous demands and initiatives that arose at the time – at the very least, of the reactions of one of the numerous ‘philosophers’ (this term took on a very broad meaning) that were expressed at that moment. For me, this concerned in particular the YouTube channel created by Jérôme Lèbre, ‘Philosophizing in the Time of the Epidemic’, which ended up including about a hundred interventions. There was also Antinomie , the Italian online journal created by Federico Ferrari and his friends, and many other instances. It was thus very clear that the pandemic, even before it was given its name, brought about a properly viral proliferation of discourse. This was ridiculed, and rightly so. But it is no less right to listen to what was said, for better or for worse (and whether we like it or not), in an urgent situation marked by anxiety and a sudden loss of bearings.

And all the more so as this sudden disarray brought to light an unmooring of certainties or of habits, one that has been active and corrosive for a long time now in the public mind and in the sensibility of developed societies, particularly in Europe. Having emerged from the fault lines or the fissures of what for a long time we took to be western infallibility, the virus was almost immediately perceived as something that revealed – indeed, deconstructed – the fragile and uncertain state of our rational and smoothly functioning civilization.