My Take | How to think about Covid-19: Slavoj Zizek, Han Byung-Chul and Yuval Noah Harari

There are two types of people in the world today: medical workers who wage an existential struggle on our behalf and the rest of us trapped in this quasi-reality of social distancing and lock-ups, and ripe for control, manipulation and exploitation

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A nurse prepares a syringe of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine during a nationwide vaccination campaign, at the Saint George Hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon. Photo: AP

Published: 9:15pm, 16 Feb 2021Updated: 9:15pm, 16 Feb 2021

One thing that immediately strikes me is that all three philosophers – Slavoj Zizek, Han Byung-Chul and Yuval Noah Harari – are from countries that have dealt with the pandemic relatively successfully, that is, respectively, Slovenia, South Korea and Israel. Maybe that gives them an intellectual or physical “safe space” to think more coolly and confidently, without panic, about the long-term implications of the global health crisis. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. I don’t know.

All three make many different and often intriguing observations, some of which will be considered below. But what they have all focused on extensively – what really worries them – is the use of big data and surveillance technologies in monitoring and containing the outbreak. Such state monitoring will be here to stay, they warn, whether you live in a democratic or authoritarian country, whether in the West or the East, with all the implications on personal space, privacy and civil liberty; or rather their erosion.

Liberty and digital surveillance

A postmodern philosopher and cultural theorist, what Han calls “digital biopolitics”, is being pioneered in Asia both because of “the digital intoxication of the Asians”, as well as their willingness to comply with state demands. It may not be physically intrusive, but it makes you totally transparent to those who monitor you.

But that’s OK with people in China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan, he claims. “A critical consciousness of digital surveillance and big data [does not exist],” he told Die Welt, a leading German newspaper last March.

“They are intoxicated by digitisation. There are cultural reasons: collectivism rules in Asia, but not radical individualism.