Objectivity in Crisis

Abstract

The article discusses a recurrent discursive mechanism by which contemporary societies respond to the emergence of a crisis. Faced with the surplus of objectivity produced by a particular crisis – be it the global economic crisis, the refugee crisis, the climate emergency or the recent pandemic – a two-component defence mechanism is formed in discourse, which in turn also assumes a pseudo-objective status. In the first step, after the initial attempt to directly deny the emergence of a crisis is overturned, the crisis is affirmed by a compromise constatation of its existence that underscores the supposedly central insight that the crisis has brought; in the second step, the constatation is supplemented by a pseudo-objective rule of action. In the case of the current pandemic, discussed in detail in the third section of the article, the rule of action has been formed as a political generalisation of the principle of proportionality. Since it is not applicable to the basic dynamic principles of the pandemic and consequently cannot solve the crisis, it has been gradually reduced to a minimum: we must learn to live with the virus.