At the Border with Reality: the Coronavirus in Italy and Memes

“Italy, the first European country to close its links with China, also became the first nation in Europe in terms of the numbers infected. With this development came the tragic counterbalance of being transformed in one fell swoop from repellers to rejected.”

After being used euphemistically for years, the term “virality” comes back to shatter our lives, taking us traumatically away from the virtual realm we have been referring to for some time, to the more tragic real that escapes us and which we cannot manage. Since “the viral” had turned from adjective to noun (to refer to that video or memo, rather than an actual infection), we came to forget the restlessness, anxiety, and panic that real virality—or, rather, biological virality—can cause, and which is, itself, amplified by the media and social virality. The pre-pandemic crisis around Covid-19, which has shut down Italy, has made the domestication of consumption that I call “isolation” even more evident, as Amazon’s suggestions pair searches for bleach with condoms; supermarkets are being looted, and delivery services and online dating apps are experiencing record surges. The virus hacks into the functioning of expert systems, offices, institutions, and consumption, while prompting us to reflect on each of their nature and function.

There is little to do but take advantage of the situation, entering smart working mode in anticipation of the virus’ ability to jump the conventional barriers of nation-states. (Those borders which have enormous geopolitical power and which, variously, encourage or inhibit the global circulation of goods, people, capital, ideas, and technologies.) Viral propagation is in itself paradoxical because it stretches the boundaries that define nations, cities, or communities. These boundaries tend to resist the forcing of viral transmission precisely because of the strong bonds that fence off the community from the invasion of the external enemy. However, once the virus has pierced the border by exploiting the weak links and penetrating the homogeneous space of the community, it begins to sow panic there. Precisely because of what was previously a defensive element—namely, the closure and homogeneity of the community—there now comes an element of cultivation and multiplication of the infection. This is what happened in Japan and South Korea, especially in Daegu, where the religious sect of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus became a virus incubation cluster and super-spreader of the disease.

Italy, the first European country to close its links with China, also became the first nation in Europe in terms of the numbers infected. With this development came the tragic counterbalance of being transformed in one fell swoop from repellers to rejected. This overturned empirically the common alarm sounded by Matteo Salvini’s right-wing populist Lega party, who usually warns of the virus arriving on immigrant boats. Coronavirus is considered a Sovranist virus because it blurs all the boundaries built by the populist vision: us against the “other” (and now we become the other), the people against the technocracy (and now we pray the technocratic system will save us from the infection spread by the people), charisma against competence (and now we are grateful to be saved by the skills of doctors, notwithstanding the chaotic unpredictability of the populist leaders).