« Guilt is action, pushing the guilty party to find a way out of his guilty conscience, to do everything to feel better, even if it means submitting, stopping fighting, giving up his freedom […] if we’re busy fighting to survive our own conscience, it no longer becomes possible to turn towards the other, to build the world. »[note]
Elsa Godart
What about the mask?! Would it kill you to put a little piece of cloth over your face? On the other hand, not doing so would kill other people! « I breathe just as well with a mask as without! »; « Teaching with a mask was no problem for me or my students! These are the kind of assertions heard during or since the Covidian episode. At the start of this one, Aurelien Barrau, an astrophysicist committed to ecology, launched into a 14-point plea, more moral than scientific, for the wearing of masks[note], a major disappointment coming from a mind that had been considered brilliant and critical from the outset. Of course, he wasn’t the only « celebrity » to do so; Pierre Palmade also gave his little lesson in masked hygiene, before causing a fatal accident. Just goes to show…
While the individual freedom cherished by « economic men[note] under neoliberalism had hitherto consisted of rejecting anything that might appear to be a constraint, suddenly, almost overnight, through the effect of propaganda, an overwhelming majority of consumer-voters willingly agreed to amputate their faces and self-asphyxiate, indoors and out, « to relieve intensive care staff and save lives ». If ex ante guilt was the dominant feeling, some of those muzzled also emanated the « pride of obedience » that Cioran pointed out. At a demonstration against Ali Baba in Liège in autumn 2020, all participants had their mouths and noses covered, with the exception of three people[note], who were immediately frowned upon by the others. Fighting China’s economic tyranny by adopting one of its current codes without batting an eyelid… strange, isn’t it?
« Is it really useful and necessary to come back to the mask in 2023? Well, yes! Kaarle Joonas Parikka started the ball rolling in Kairos no. 60, and his article « The banality of the mask » could have been part of this dossier. The press sometimes works at cross-purposes! Phenomenologically speaking, the mask has at the very least become one of the symbols of the disciplinary society described by Michel Foucault. But it’s probably much more than that: it’s just another Trojan horse on the road to the next stage, the society of control (Gilles Deleuze), and even worse, the society of constraint, as Pièces et Main d’œuvre predicted a decade ago[note]. For two years, it was the visible, daily, omnipresent element of the psychological warfare waged on the population by the ruling class and relayed by the servile media. It was the new shock accessory of conformism for « a complexed crowd seeking to please through the quest for consensus, whatever the cost[note] « . In short, the sanitary mask is an instrument of biopolitics. Let’s prophesize a little: it’s almost certain that the authorities will seek to reimpose[note] on us in the indeterminate future, the first trial having been very conclusive. But let’s not get caught up in it! The autonomy we claim as anti-productivists has as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to live without a mask-muselière, as free political subjects identifiable by their peers, not as zombies to be maintained in connected survival.
We recognize everyone’s right to take a positive view of the therapeutic state « which has increased our life expectancy through medical progress ». It’s also our right to believe that its endless extension, in the form of psychobiopower – totalitarian power over minds and bodies – is neither an anthropologically desirable nor a socially viable option. Our dossier is obviously not limited to the defense of an individual freedom, but takes the necessary height to resituate the mask in a broad context, at once scientific (with Louis Fouché and Carole Cassagne), political (with Philippe Godard), psychosocial (with Kenny Cadinu), philosophical and spiritual (with Martin Steffens). Let’s be anti-mask, now more than ever!
File coordinated by Alexandre Penasse and Bernard Legros
Addendum: as we go to press, covidian storytelling is making a comeback in the mainstream media. We urged them to examine their consciences and put things right, but to no avail.
