The Virtual and the Viral: Deleuze, Dark Philosophies, and Global Pandemics

Abstract

At the point of convergence between speculative realism, nihilism, and a certain taste for horror culture, “dark philosophies” have emerged as some of the most original theoretical proposals of our times. All these philosophies see virality as the paradigmatic event that disturbs the global axiomatics of capitalism. Today, this globality is precisely what gives virality its enormous strength. What dark philosophies can teach us, through a crossed reflection on current socialpolitical conditions and on the concept of life, is how to draw from virality a possibility for thought: virality is a pharmacological concept, and its meaning will be in a great part dependent on what we will be able to make of it. A thorough reflection on virality could bring us to see in the present situation not only a possibility for new kinds of individuation, but also a catalyst for a type of politics that is perhaps the only possibility to cope with imperial axiomatics.