In this volume, the renowned Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has collected all of his fierce, passionate, and deeeply personal interventions regarding the current health emergency. Alongside and beyond accusations and exact descriptions, these texts variously reflect upon the great transformation affecting Western democracies. In the name of biosecurity and health, the model of bourgeois democracy together with its rights, parliaments, and constitutions is everywhere surrendering to a new despotism where citizens seem to accept unprecedented limitations to their freedoms. This leads to the urgency of the volume s title: Where Are We Now? For how long will we accept living in a constantly extended state of exception, the end of which is impossible to see?


Giorgio Agamben is a philosopher and political theorist who has been described as “one of the most vital and most discussed figures in academia”. Renowned for his insights into the history and contemporary crises of Western thought, his many works include The End of the Poem (Stanford University Press), Infancy and History (Verso Books), State of Exception (The University of Ch...