This quote is taken from the introduction to the chapter of The Barbarian called "Crisis".
The concept ‘crisis’ has indeed become a motto of modern politics, and for a long time it has been part of normality in any segment of social life. The very word expresses two semantic roots: the medical one, referring to the course of an illness, and the theological one of the Last Judgement. Both meanings, however, have undergone a transformation today, taking away their relation to time. ‘Crisis’ in ancient medicine meant a judgement, when the doctor noted at the decisive moment whether the sick person would survive or die. The present understanding of crisis, on the other hand, refers to an enduring state. So this uncertainty is extended into the future, indefinitely. It is exactly the same with the theological sense; the Last Judgement was inseparable from the end of time…Today crisis has become an instrument of rule. It serves to legitimize political and economic decisions that in fact dispossess citizens and deprive them of any possibility of decision…We must start by restoring the original meaning of the word ‘crisis’, as a moment of judgement and choice.-Agamben
Today we are certainly seeing the dispossessing of the citizens under the banner of "crisis", and it is not just on a national scale, but an international, global scale. The present "crisis" has seen the largest dispossessing of general public ever. What meager to acceptable standard of living you once had, has been shredded. In spite of rapid increase in production efficiency, across the planet the ordinary people are poorer now than they were ten years or so ago, all due to the "crisis". In actual fact, those who saw it as a "crisis", and caused that "crisis" are all doing fine, they are not being dispossessed, they are doing the dispossessing.
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