Benjamin H. Bratton’s caution against viewing the pandemic circumstance as a “state of exception” rather than as “revealing ‘pre-existing conditions’” (via Drew Austin) reminds me that this also precisely is how we need to view Trump.
The sense of emergency is palpable and real. But instead of naming this moment a “state of exception,” we see it more as revealing “pre-existing conditions.” The consequences of poor planning (or no planning), broken social systems, and isolationist reflexes are explicit. Vigilance should be held not against the “exception” on behalf of familiar norms, but against the return to those dysfunctional norms after the coast is declared clear. We must keep the focus trained on the pathologies revealed and in doing so willfully inhabit the difficult ramifications of change.