ABSTRACT
Michael Foucault described the ‘plague towns’ and street-level administrative procedures for quarantine in the Middle Ages in terms of ‘strict spatial partitioning’ as an early form of panopticism. Governments are nothing more than grim executioners, and taking it out on them seems more like a diversionary maneuver than a political reflection. In the US state with its continual state vs. federal tensions, government operates differently than Italy. The viral experiments of globalization, interconnectivity and pandemic in the post-digital era, disastrous as it has been, involving incalculable human suffering, at the same time provide the opportunity to raise some questions rather than embrace a theory dogmatically. The only problem was that the lockdown started too late and also that the free flow of important scientific information was halted in the early stages.
