If philosophy ever manifested itself as helpful, redeeming, or prophylactic, it was in a healthy culture. The sick, it made ever sicker. – Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks 01/09

§1. Centenary of “Crisis of the Spirit” In 1919, after the First World War, the French poet Paul Valéry in “Crisis of the Spirit” wrote: “We later civilizations … we too know that we are mortal.”1 It is only in such a catastrophe, and as an après coup, that we know we are nothing but Yuk Hui fragile beings. One hundred years later, a bat from China – if indeed the coronavirus comes from bats – has driven the whole planet into One Hundred another crisis. Were Valéry still alive, he wouldn’t be allowed to walk out of his house in France. Years of Crisis đđđđđđđđđđThe crisis of the spirit in 1919 was preceded by a nihilism, a nothingness, that haunted Europe before 1914. As Valéry wrote of the intellectual scene before the war: “I see … nothing! Nothing … and yet an infinitely potential nothing.” In Valéry’s 1920 poem “Le Cimetière Marin” (“Graveyard by the Sea”) we read a Nietzschean affirmative call: “The wind is rising! … We must try to live!” This verse was later adopted by Hayao Miyazaki as the title of his animation film about Jiro Horikoshi, the engineer who designed fighter aircraft for the Japanese Empire that were later used in the Second World War. This nihilism recursively returns in the form of a Nietzschean test: a demon invades your loneliest loneliness and asks if you want to live in the eternal recurrence of the same – the same spider, the same moonlight between the trees, and the same demon who asks the same question. Any philosophy that cannot live with and directly confront this nihilism provides no sufficient answer, since such a philosophy only makes the sick culture sicker, or in our time, withdraws into laughable philosophical memes circulating on social media. đđđđđđđđđđThe nihilism Valéry contested has been constantly nurtured by technological acceleration and globalization since the eighteenth century. As Valéry wrote towards the end of his essay:

e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 8 — p i 2 đ Y k H O n e H u d r Y a s o f C i But can the European spirit – or at least its most precious content – be totally diffused? Must such phenomena as democracy, the exploitation of the globe, and the general spread of technology, all of which presage a deminutio capitis for Europe … must these be taken as absolute decisions of fate?2

12.21.20 / 22:27:44 EST This threat of diffusion – which Europe may have Globalisierung zur tödlichen Gefahr wird (When attempted to affirm – is no longer something globalization becomes deadly danger), that can be confronted by Europe alone, and illustrated with an image of a Chinese person in probably will never be completely overcome excessive protective gear gazing at an iPhone again by the European “tragist” spirit.3 “Tragist” with eyes almost closed, as if praying to a god.6 is first of all related to Greek tragedy; it is also The coronavirus outbreak is not a terrorist attack the logic of the spirit endeavoring to resolve – so far, there has been no clear evidence of the contradictions arising from within. In “What 02/09 virus’s origin beyond its first appearance in China Begins after the End of the Enlightenment?” and – but is rather an organological event in which a other essays, I have tried to sketch out how, virus attaches to advanced transportation since the Enlightenment, and after the decline of networks, travelling up to 900 km per hour. It is monotheism, the latter was replaced by a mono- also an event that seems to return us to the technologism (or techno-theism), which has discourse of the nation-state and a geopolitics culminated today in transhumanism.4 We, the defined by nations. By returning, I mean that, moderns, the cultural heirs to the European first of all, the coronavirus has restored meaning Hamlet (who, in Valéry’s “Crisis of the Spirit,” to borders that were seemingly blurred by global looks back at the European intellectual legacy by capitalism and the increasing mobility promoted counting the skulls of Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and by cultural exchange and international trade. The Marx), one hundred years after Valéry’s writing, global outbreak has announced that have believed and still want to believe that we globalization so far has only cultivated a mono- will become immortal, that we will be able to technological culture that can only lead to an enhance our immune system against all viruses autoimmune response and a great regression. or simply flee to Mars when the worst cases hit. Secondly, the outbreak and the return to nation- Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, researching states reveal the historical and actual limit of the travel to Mars seems irrelevant for stopping the concept of the nation-state itself. Modern spread of the virus and saving lives. We mortals nation-states have attempted to cover up these who still inhabit this planet called earth may not limits through immanent infowars, constructing have the chance to wait to become immortal, as infospheres that move beyond borders. However, the transhumanists have touted in their rather than producing a global immunology, on corporate slogans. A pharmacology of nihilism the contrary, these infospheres use the apparent after Nietzsche is still yet to be written, but the contingency of the global space to wage toxin has already pervaded the global body and biological warfare. A global immunology that we caused a crisis in its immune system. can use to confront this stage of globalization is đđđđđđđđđđFor Jacques Derrida (whose widow, not yet available, and it may never become Marguerite Derrida, recently died of coronavirus), available if this mono-technological culture the September 11, 2001 attack on the World persists. Trade Center marked the manifestation of an autoimmune crisis, dissolving the techno- §2. A European Schmitt Sees Millions of political power structure that had been Ghosts stabilized for decades: a Boeing 767 was used as During the 2016 refugee crisis in Europe, the a weapon against the country that invented it, philosopher Peter Sloterdijk criticized Germany’s like a mutated cell or virus from within.5 The term chancellor Angela Merkel in an interview with the “autoimmune” is only a biological metaphor magazine Cicero, saying, “We have yet to learn to when used in the political context: globalization glorify borders … Europeans will sooner or later is the creation of a world system whose stability develop an efficient common border policy. In the depends on techno-scientific and economic long run the territorial imperative prevails. After hegemony. Consequently, 9/11 came to be seen all, there is no moral obligation to self- as a rupture which ended the political destruction.”7 Even if Sloterdijk was wrong in configuration willed by the Christian West since saying that Germany and the EU should have the Enlightenment, calling forth an closed their borders to refugees, in retrospect immunological response expressed as a one may say that he was right about the question permanent state of exception – wars upon wars. e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 8 — p i 2 đ Y k H O n e H u d r Y a s o f C i of borders not being well thought out. Roberto The coronavirus now collapses this metaphor: Esposito has clearly stated that a binary (polar) the biological and the political become one. logic persists concerning the function of borders: Attempts to contain the virus don’t only involve one insists on stricter control as an disinfectant and medicine, but also military immunological defense against an outer enemy – mobilizations and lockdowns of countries, a classical and intuitive understanding of borders, international flights, and trains. immunology as opposition between the self and đđđđđđđđđđIn late January, Der Spiegel published an the other – while the other proposes the issue titled Coronavirus, Made in China: Wenn die abolition of borders to allow freedom of mobility

12.21.20 / 22:27:44 EST and possibilities of association for individuals micro-fascisms become common on streets and and goods. Esposito suggests that neither of the in restaurants: when you involuntarily cough, two extremes – and it is somewhat obvious today everyone stares at you. More than ever, people – is ethically and practically undesirable.8 demand an immunosphere – what Peter đđđđđđđđđđThe outbreak of the coronavirus in China – Sloterdijk suggested – as protection and as beginning in mid-November until an official social organization. warning was announced in late January, followed đđđđđđđđđđIt seems that immunological acts, which by the lockdown of Wuhan on January 23 – led 03/09 cannot simply be reduced to racist acts, justify a immediately to international border controls return to borders – individual, social, and against Chinese or even Asian-looking people in national. In biological immunology as well as general, identified as carriers of the virus. Italy political immunology, after decades of debate on was one of the first countries to impose a travel the self–other paradigm and the organismic ban on China; already in late January, Rome’s paradigm, modern states return to border Santa Cecilia Conservatory suspended “oriental” controls as the simplest and most intuitive form students from taking classes, even those who of defense, even when the enemy is not visible.9 had never in their life been to China. These acts – In fact, we are only fighting against the which we may call immunological – are incarnation of the enemy. Here, we are all bound conducted out of fear, but more fundamentally by what Carl Schmitt calls the political, defined out of ignorance. by the distinction between friend and enemy – a đđđđđđđđđđIn Hong Kong – right next to Shenzhen in definition not easily deniable, and probably Guangdong province, one of the major outbreak strengthened during a pandemic. When the regions outside Hubei province – there were enemy is invisible, it has to be incarnated and strong voices urging the government to close the identified: firstly the Chinese, the Asians, and border with China. The government refused, then the Europeans, the North Americans; or, citing the World Health Organization advising inside China, the inhabitants of Wuhan. countries to avoid imposing travel and trade Xenophobia nourishes nationalism, whether as restrictions on China. As one of two special the self considering xenophobia an inevitable administrative regions of China, Hong Kong SAR immunological act, or the other mobilizing is not supposed to oppose China nor add to its xenophobia to strengthen its own nationalism as recent burden of underwhelming economic immunology. growth. And yet, some Hong Kong restaurants đđđđđđđđđđThe League of Nations was founded in 1919 posted notices on their doors announcing that after the First World War, and was later Mandarin-speaking clients were unwelcome. succeeded by the United Nations, as a strategy Mandarin is associated with virus-carrying to avoid war by gathering all nations into a Mainland Chinese people, therefore the dialect is common organization. Perhaps Carl Schmitt’s considered a sign of danger. A restaurant that criticism of this attempt was accurate in under normal circumstances is open to anyone claiming that the League of Nations, which had who can afford it is now only open to certain its one-hundred-year anniversary last year, people. mistakenly identified humanity as the common đđđđđđđđđđAll forms of racism are fundamentally ground of world politics, when humanity is not a immunological. Racism is a social antigen, since political concept. Instead, humanity is a concept it clearly distinguishes the self and the other and of depoliticization, since identifying an abstract reacts against any instability introduced by the humanity which doesn’t exist “can misuse peace, other. However, not all immunological acts can justice, progress, and civilization in order to be considered racism. If we don’t confront the claim these as one’s own and to deny the same to ambiguity between the two, we collapse the enemy.”10 As we know, the League of Nations everything into the night where all cows are grey. was a group of representatives from different In the case of a global pandemic, an countries that was unable to prevent one of the immunological reaction is especially unavoidable greatest catastrophes of the twentieth century, when contamination is facilitated by the Second World War, and was therefore intercontinental flights and trains. Before the replaced by the United Nations. Isn’t the closing of Wuhan, five million inhabitants had e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 8 — p i 2 đ Y k H O n e H u d r Y a s o f C i argument applicable to the World Health escaped, involuntarily transporting the virus out Organization, a global organization meant to of the city. In fact, whether one is labelled as transcend national borders and provide being from Wuhan is irrelevent, since everyone warnings, advice, and governance concerning can be regarded as suspect, considering that the global health issues? Considering how the WHO virus can be latent for days on a body without had virtually no positive role in preventing the symptoms, all the while contaminating its spread of coronavirus – if not a negative role: its surroundings. There are immunological moments general director even refused to call it a one cannot easily escape when xenophobia and pandemic until it was evident to everyone – what

12.21.20 / 22:27:44 EST makes the WHO necessary at all? Naturally, the profit, and also prevents any player from taking work of professionals working in and with the different paths and directions – the “techno- organization deserves enormous respect, yet the diversity” that I have written about extensively. case of the coronavirus has exposed a crisis in Techno-diversity doesn’t merely mean that the political function of the larger organization. different countries produce the same type of Worse still, we can only criticize such a gigantic technology (mono-technology) with different money-burning global governing body for its branding and slightly different features. Rather, failure on social media, like shouting into the 04/09 it refers to a multiplicity of cosmotechnics that wind, but no one has the capacity to change differ from each other in terms of values, anything, as democratic processes are reserved epistemologies, and forms of existence. The for nations. current form of competition that uses economic and technological means to override politics is §3. The Bad Infinity of Mono-technologism often attributed to neoliberalism, while its close If we follow Schmitt, the WHO is primarily an relative transhumanism considers politics only a instrument of depoliticization, since its function humanist epistemology soon to be overcome to warn of coronavirus could have been done through technological acceleration. We arrive at better by any news agency. Indeed, a number of an impasse of modernity: one cannot easily countries acted too slowly by following the withdraw from such competition for fear of being WHO’s early judgment of the situation. As surpassed by others. It is like the metaphor of Schmitt writes, an international representational modern man that Nietzsche described: a group governing body, forged in the name of humanity, permanently abandons its village to embark on a “does not eliminate the possibility of wars, just sea journey in pursuit of the infinite, but arrive at as it does not abolish states. It introduces new the middle of the ocean only to realize that the possibilities for wars, permits wars to take place, infinite is not a destination.12 And there is sanctions coalition wars, and by legitimizing and nothing more terrifying than the infinite when sanctioning certain wars it sweeps away many there is no longer any way of turning back. obstacles to war.”11 Isn’t the manipulation of đđđđđđđđđđThe coronavirus, like all catastrophes, may global governance bodies by world powers and force us to ask where we are heading. Though we transnational capital since the Second World know we are only heading to the void, still, we War only a continuation of this logic? Hasn’t this have been driven by a tragist impulse to “try to virus that was controllable at the beginning live.” Amidst intensified competition, the interest sunken the world into a global state of war? of states is no longer with their subjects but Instead, these organizations contribute to a rather economic growth – any care for a global sickness where mono-technological population is due to their contributions to economic competition and military expansion are economic growth. This is self-evident in how the only aim, detaching human beings from their China initially tried to silence news about the localities rooted in the earth and replacing them coronavirus, and then, after Xi Jinping warned with fictive identities shaped by modern nation- that measures against the virus damage the states and infowars. economy, the number of new cases dramatically đđđđđđđđđđThe concept of the state of exception or dropped to zero. It is the same ruthless economic state of emergency was originally meant to allow “logic” that made other countries decide to wait the sovereign to immunize the commonwealth, and see, because preventive measures such as but since 9/11 it had tended towards a political travel restrictions (which the WHO advised norm. The normalization of the state of against), airport screenings, and postponing the emergency is not only an expression of the Olympic Games impact tourism. absolute power of the sovereign, but also of the đđđđđđđđđđThe media as well as many philosophers modern nation-state struggling and failing to present a somewhat naive argument concerning confront the global situation by expanding and the Asian “authoritarian approach” and the establishing its borders through all available allegedly liberal/libertarian/democratic approach technological and economic means. Border of Western countries. The Chinese (or Asian) control is an effective immunological act only if authoritarian way – often misunderstood as one understands geopolitics in terms of e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 8 — p i 2 đ Y k H O n e H u d r Y a s o f C i Confucian, though Confucianism is not at all an sovereigns defined by borders. After the Cold authoritarian or coercive philosophy – has been War, increasing competition has resulted in a effective in managing the population using mono-technological culture that no longer already widespread consumer surveillance balances economic and technological progress, technologies (facial recognition, mobile data but rather assimilates them while moving analysis, etc.) to identify the spread of the virus. towards an apocalyptic endpoint. Competition When the outbreaks started in Europe, there was based on mono-technology is devastating the still debate on whether to use personal data. But earth’s resources for the sake of competition and if we are really to choose between “Asian

12.21.20 / 22:27:44 EST authoritarian governance” and “Western still need to ask what an “organismic” global liberal/libertarian governance,” Asian immune system could look like beyond simply authoritarian governance appears more claiming to coexist with the coronavirus.14 What acceptable for facing further catastrophes, since kind of co-immunity or co-immunism (the the libertarian way of managing such pandemics neologism that Sloterdijk proposed) is possible if is essentially eugenicist, allowing self-selection we want globalization to continue, and to to rapidly eliminate the older population. In any continue in a less contradictory way? Sloterdijk’s case, all of these cultural essentialist 05/09 strategy of co-immunity is interesting but oppositions are misleading, since they ignore the politically ambivalent – probably also because it solidarities and spontaneity among communities is not sufficiently elaborated in his major works and people’s diverse moral obligations to the – oscillating between a border politics of the far- elderly and family; yet this type of ignorance is right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party and necessary for vain expressions of one’s own Roberto Esposito’s contaminated immunity. superiority. However, the problem is that if we still follow the đđđđđđđđđđBut where else can our civilization move? logic of nation-states, we will never arrive at a The scale of this question mostly overwhelms our co-immunity. Not only because a state is not a imagination, leaving us to hope, as a last resort, cell nor an organism (no matter how attractive that we can resume a “normal life,” whatever this and practical this metaphor is for theorists), but term means. In the twentieth century, also more fundamentally because the concept intellectuals looked for other geopolitical options itself can only produce an immunity based on and configurations to surpass the Schmittian friend and enemy, regardless of whether it concept of the political, as Derrida did in his assumes the form of international organizations Politics of Friendship, where he responded to or councils. Modern states, while composed of Schmitt by deconstructing the concept of all their subjects like the Leviathan, have no friendship. Deconstruction opens an ontological interest beyond economic growth and military difference between friendship and community to expansion, at least not before the arrival of a suggest another politics beyond the humanitarian crisis. Haunted by an imminent friend–enemy dichotomy fundamental to economic crisis, nation-states become the twentieth-century political theory, namely source (rather than the target) of manipulative hospitality. “Unconditional” and “incalculable” fake news. hospitality, which we may call friendship, can be conceived in geopolitics as undermining §4. Abstract and Concrete Solidarity sovereignty, like when the Japanese Let’s return here to the question of borders and deconstructionist philosopher Kōjin Karatani question the nature of this war we are fighting claimed that the perpetual peace dreamed of by now, which UN Secretary-General António Kant would only be possible when sovereignty Guterres considers the biggest challenge the UN could be given as a gift – in the sense of a has faced since the Second World War. The war Maussian gift economy, which would follow the against the virus is first of all an infowar. The global capitalist empire.13 However, such a enemy is invisible. It can only be located through possibility is conditioned by the abolition of information about communities and the mobility sovereignty, in order words, the abolition of of individuals. The efficacy of the war depends nation-states. For this to happen, according to on the ability to gather and analyze information Karatani, we would probably need a Third World and to mobilize available resources to achieve War followed by an international governing body the highest efficiency. For countries exercising with more power than the United Nations. In fact, strict online censorship, it is possible to contain Angela Merkel’s refugee policy and the “one the virus like containing a “sensitive” keyword country, two systems” brilliantly conceived by circulating on social media. The use of the term Deng Xiaoping are moving towards this end “information” in political contexts has often been without war. The latter has the potential to equated with propaganda, though we should become an even more sophisticated and avoid simply seeing it as a question of mass interesting model than the federal system. media and journalism, or even freedom of

However the former has been a target of fierce e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 8 — p i 2 đ Y k H O n e H u d r Y a s o f C i speech. Infowar is twenty-first century warfare. attacks and the latter is in the process of being It is not a specific type of war, but war in its destroyed by narrow-minded nationalists and permanence. dogmatic Schmittians. A Third World War will be đđđđđđđđđđIn his lectures collected in “Society Must Be the quickest option if no country is willing to Defended”, Michel Foucault inverted Carl von move forward. Clausewitz’s aphorism “war is the continuation đđđđđđđđđđBefore that day arrives, and before an even of politics by other means” into “politics is the more serious catastrophe brings us closer to continuation of war by other means.”15 While the extinction (which we can already sense), we may inversion proposes that war no longer assumes

12.21.20 / 22:27:44 EST the form Clausewitz had in mind, Foucault hadn’t extending technologically and economically yet developed a discourse on infowar. More than beyond them to establish new borders. twenty years ago, a book titled Wars without Infospheres are constructed by humans, and, in Limit (超限戰, officially translated as Unrestricted spite of having greatly expanded in recent Warfare or Warfare beyond Bounds) was decades, remain undetermined in their published in China by two former senior air force becoming. Insofar as the imagination of co- colonels. This book was soon translated into immunity – as a possible communism or mutual

French, and is said to have influenced the Tiqqun 06/09 aid between nations – can only be an abstract collective and later the Invisible Committee. The solidarity, it is vulnerable to cynicism, similar to two former colonels – who know Clausewitz well the case of “humanity.” Recent decades have but haven’t read Foucault – arrived at the claim seen some philosophical discourses succeed in that traditional warfare would slowly fade away, nurturing an abstract solidarity, which can turn to be replaced by immanent wars in the world, into sect-based communities whose immunity is largely introduced and made possible by determined through agreement and information technology. This book could be read disagreement. Abstract solidarity is appealing as an analysis of the US global war strategy, but because it is abstract: as opposed to being also more importantly as a penetrating analysis concrete, the abstract is not grounded and has of how infowar redefines politics and geopolitics. no locality; it can be transported anywhere and đđđđđđđđđđThe war against coronavirus is at the same dwell anywhere. But abstract solidarity is a time a war of misinformation and disinformation, product of globalization, a meta-narrative (or which characterizes post-truth politics. The virus even metaphysics) for something that has long may be a contingent event that triggered the since confronted its own end. present crisis, but the war itself is no longer đđđđđđđđđđTrue co-immunity is not abstract solidarity, contingent. Infowar also opens two other (to but rather departs from a concrete solidarity some extent pharmacological) possibilities: first, whose co-immunity should ground the next wave warfare that no longer takes the state as its unit of globalization (if there is one). Since the start of of measure, instead constantly deterritorializing this pandemic, there have been countless acts of the state with invisible weapons and no clear true solidarity, where it matters greatly who will boundaries; and second, civil war, which takes buy groceries for you if you are not able to go to the form of competing infospheres. The war the supermarket, or who will give you a mask against coronavirus is a war against the carriers when you need to visit the hospital, or who will of the virus, and a war conducted using fake offer respirators for saving lives, and so forth. news, rumors, censorship, fake statistics, There are also solidarities among medical misinformation, etc. In parallel to the US using communities that share information towards the Silicon Valley technology to expand its development of vaccines. Gilbert Simondon infosphere and penetrate most of the earth’s distinguished between abstract and concrete population, China has also built one of the through technical objects: abstract technical largest and most sophisticated infospheres in objects are mobile and detachable, like those the world, with well-equipped firewalls embraced by the eighteenth-century consisting of both humans and machines, which encyclopedists that (to this day) inspire has allowed it to contain the virus within a optimism about the possibility of progress; population of 1.4 billion. This infosphere is concrete technical objects are those that are expanding thanks to the infrastructure of China’s grounded (perhaps literally) in both the human “One Belt, One Road” initiative, as well as its and natural worlds, acting as a mediator already established networks in Africa, causing between the two. A cybernetic machine is more the US to respond, in the name of security and concrete than a mechanical clock, which is more intellectual property, by blocking Huawei from concrete than a simple tool. Can we thus extending its infosphere. Of course, infowar is conceive of a concrete solidarity that not waged only by sovereigns. Within China, circumvents the impasse of an immunology different factions compete against each other based in nation-states and abstract solidarity? through official media, traditional media such as Can we consider the infosphere to be an newspapers, and independent media outlets. For e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 8 — p i 2 đ Y k H O n e H u d r Y a s o f C i opportunity pointing towards such immunology? instance, both the traditional media and đđđđđđđđđđWe may need to enlarge the concept of the independent media fact-checked state figures infosphere in two ways. First of all, the building on the outbreak, forcing the government to of infospheres could be understood as an redress their own mistakes and distribute more attempt to construct techno-diversity, to medical equipment to hospitals in Wuhan. dismantle the mono-technological culture from đđđđđđđđđđThe coronavirus renders explicit the within and escape its “bad infinity.” This immanence of infowar through the nation-state’s diversification of technologies also implies a necessity to defend its physical borders while diversification of ways of life, forms of

12.21.20 / 22:27:45 EST coexistence, economies, and so forth, since this accelerating digitalization process can be technology, insofar as it is cosmotechnics, taken as an opportunity, a kairos that underlines embeds different relations with nonhumans and the current global crisis. The calls for a global the larger cosmos.16 This techno-diversification response have put everyone in the same boat, does not imply an ethical framework imposed and the goal of resuming “normal life” is not an onto technology, for this always arrives too late adequate response. The coronavirus outbreak and is often made to be violated. Without marks the first time in more than twenty years changing our technologies and our attitudes, we 07/09 that online teaching has come to be offered by all will only preserve biodiversity as an exceptional university departments. There have been many case without ensuring its sustainability. In other reasons for the resistance to digital teaching, but words, without techno-diversity, we cannot most are minor and sometimes irrational maintain biodiversity. The coronavirus is not (institutes dedicated to digital cultures may still nature’s revenge but the result of a mono- find physical presence to be important for technological culture in which technology itself human resource management). Online teaching simultaneously loses its own ground and desires will not completely replace physical presence, to become the ground of everything else. The but it does radically open up access to mono-technologism we live now ignores the knowledge and return us to the question of necessity of coexistence and continues to see education at a time when many universities are the earth merely as a standing reserve. With the being defunded. Will the suspension of normal vicious competition it sustains, it will only life by coronavirus allow us to change these continue to produce more catastrophes. habits? For example, can we take the coming According to this view, after the exhaustion and months (and maybe years), when most devastation of spaceship earth, we may only universities in the world will use online teaching, embark on the same exhaustion and devastation as a chance to create serious digital institutions on spaceship Mars. at an unprecedented scale? A global immunology đđđđđđđđđđSecondly, the infosphere can be considered demands such radical reconfigurations. a concrete solidarity extending beyond borders, đđđđđđđđđđThis essay’s opening quote is from as an immunology that no longer takes as its Nietzsche’s incomplete Philosophy in the Tragic point of departure the nation-state, with its Age of the Greeks, written around 1873. Instead international organizations that are effectively of alluding to his own exclusion from the puppets of global powers. For such concrete discipline of philosophy, Nietzsche identified solidarity to emerge, we need a techno-diversity cultural reform with philosophers in ancient which develops alternative technologies such as Greece who wanted to reconcile science and new social networks, collaborative tools, and myth, rationality and passion. We are no longer in infrastructures of digital institutions that will the tragic age, but in a time of catastrophes form the basis for global collaboration. Digital when neither tragist nor Daoist thinking alone media already has a long social history, though can provide an escape. In view of the sickness of few forms beyond that of Silicon Valley (and global culture, we have an urgent need for WeChat in China) assume a global scale. This is reforms driven by new thinking and new largely due to an inherited philosophical tradition frameworks that will allow us to unbind – with its oppositions between nature and ourselves from what philosophy has imposed technology, and between culture and technology and ignored. The coronavirus will destroy many – that fails to see a plurality of technologies as institutions already threatened by digital realizable. Technophilia and technophobia technologies. It will also necessitate increasing become the symptoms of mono-technological surveillance and other immunological measures culture. We are familiar with the development of against the virus, as well as against terrorism hacker culture, free software, and open-source and threats to national security. It is also a communities over the past few decades, yet the moment in which we will need stronger concrete, focus has been on developing alternatives to digital solidarities. A digital solidarity is not a call hegemonic technologies instead of building to use more Facebook, Twitter, or WeChat, but to alternative modes of access, collaboration, and get out of the vicious competition of mono- more importantly, epistemology. e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 8 — p i 2 đ Y k H O n e H u d r Y a s o f C i technological culture, to produce a techno- đđđđđđđđđđThe coronavirus incident will consequently diversity through alternative technologies and accelerate processes of digitalization and their corresponding forms of life and ways of subsumption by the data economy, since it has dwelling on the planet and in the cosmos. In our been the most effective tool available to counter post-metaphysical world we may not need any the spread, as we have already seen in the recent metaphysical pandemics. We may not need a turn in favor of using mobile data for tracing the virus-oriented ontology either. What we really outbreak in countries that otherwise cherish need is a concrete solidarity that allows privacy. We may want to pause and ask whether differences and divergences before the falling of

12.21.20 / 22:27:45 EST dusk. Yuk Hui is a philosopher from Hong Kong.đHe obtained đđđđđđđđđđ× his PhD from Goldsmiths College London and his I would like to thank Brian Kuan Wood and Pieter Lemmens Habilitation from Leuphana University Lüneburg. He for their comments and editorial suggestions on the drafts of teaches at the City University of Hong Kong.đHis latest the essay. book is Recursivity and Contingencyđ(2019). 08/09 e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 8 — p i 2 đ Y k H O n e H u d r Y a s o f C i

12.21.20 / 22:27:45 EST đđđđđđ1 Exchange, trans. Michael K. Paul Valéry, “Crisis of the Spirit” Bourdaghs (Duke University (original translation “Crisis of Press, 2014). the Mind”), trans. Denise Folliot and Jackson Matthews, 1911 đđđđđđ14 https://en.wikisource.org/wi We also have to carefully ask if a ki/Crisis_of_the_Mind. “La Crise biological metaphor is de l’Esprit” originally appeared appropriate at all despite its in English in The Athenaeum wide acceptance. I contested (London), April 11 and May 2, this in Recursivity and 1919. The French text was Contingency (Rowman and published the same year in the Littlefield International, 2019) by 09/09 August issue of La Nouvelle analyzing the history of Revue Française. organicism, its position in the history of epistemology, and its đđđđđđ2 relation to modern technology, Valéry, “Crisis of the Spirit.” questioning its validity as metaphor of politics, especially đđđđđđ3 concerning environmental “Tragist” is a new term I use in politics. my forthcoming book Art and Cosmotechnics (University of đđđđđđ15 Minnesota Press, 2020). Michel Foucault, “Society Must be Defended”: Lectures at the đđđđđđ4 Collège de France 1975–1976, Yuk Hui, “What Begins After the trans. David Macey (Picador, End of the Enlightenment?,” e- 2003), 15. flux journal no. 96 (January 2019) https://www.e-flux.com/journ đđđđđđ16 al/96/245507/what-begins-aft I develop this diversification of er-the-end-of-the-enlightenm technologies as “multiple ent/. cosmotechnics” in The Question Concerning Technology in China: đđđđđđ5 An Essay in Cosmotechnics On the autoimmune character of (Urbanomic, 2016). the 9/11 attacks, see Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (University of Chicago Press, 2004).

đđđđđđ6 “Wenn die Globalisierung zur tödlichen Gefahr wird,” Der Spiegel, January 31, 2020 https://www.spiegel.de/polit ik/ausland/coronavirus-wenn- die-globalisierung-zur-toedl ichen-gefahr-wird-a-00000000 - 0002-0001-0000-000169240263 .

đđđđđđ7 Peter Sloterdijk, “Es gibt keine moralische Pflicht zur Selbstzerstörung,” Cicero Magazin für politische Kultur, January 28, 2016.

đđđđđđ8 See Roberto Esposito, Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life, trans. Zakiya Hanafi (Polity Press, 2011).

đđđđđđ9 See Alfred I. Tauber, Immunity: The Evolution of an Idea (Oxford University Press, 2017).

đđđđđđ10 Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (University of Chicago Press, 2007), 54.

đđđđđđ11

Schmitt, Concept of the Political, e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 8 — p i 2 đ Y k H O n e H u d r Y a s o f C i 56.

đđđđđđ12 See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 119.

đđđđđđ13 See Kōjin Karatani, The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of

12.21.20 / 22:27:45 EST