ISSN: 2535-3241

Vol. 4, No. 1 (2020): E18-E24 https://doi.org/10.5617.7864

Essay

COVID-19, Discipline and Blame

From Italy with a Call for Alternative Futures

Davide Casciano
University of Bologna, Italy

The preventive measures implemented to contain the COVID-19 pandemic in

Italy involve the self-isolation of the population. At the same time, I argue, an
ethos of self-discipline is promoted, leading to ambiguous results. Although the
pandemic may allow some people to imagine a different future, others have per-
ceived it as the beginning of a war. And in this war, the most critical aspect is dis-
tributing blame and punishing the agents responsible for the contagion – the
undisciplined ones who threaten social collectivity.

Since mid-February, the Italian government came forth with several pronounce-
ments, starting with the shutting down of businesses in some areas of Northern
Italy and ending up with declaring a whole region as a red zone whose borders
were to be isolated. The crisis spiraled to the point that, on the 10th of March
2020, the government implemented a Ministerial Decree, including special mea-
sures to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the whole country. Among these, the
population self-isolation was initially only suggested, but with many increasingly
restrictive instructions, it eventually came to be imposed by means of fines and
threats of charges for non-compliant individuals. For those who tested positive for
the virus, even if asymptomatic, an absolute prohibition to leave home has been

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imposed. But also, others’ freedom of movement has been gradually limited to the
point of being allowed out only in case of proven extreme needs. Every citizen
who leaves home must bring a self-certification form, declaring the reason for his
or her movement. Police officers and soldiers patrol the streets, collecting evidence
and issuing fines when they consider the reason for moving outside the home as
not justifiable. The penalties were initially meant to tarnish the offenders’ criminal
record; subsequently, given their high number, they became civil and financial
penalties, ranging from 400 to 3000 euro. The self-certification form defines what
the recognized essential needs for moving are: to buy groceries, to let the dog out,
serious health reasons, to throw the garbage, to go to the pharmacy, or for work.
These essential needs should always be met within a certain distance from one’s
residence. All productive activities considered not ‘essential’ have been suspended
– most shops, gyms, cinemas, and so on – while, whenever possible, people have
started working remotely, as in universities and schools. Many public spaces have
been closed, like parks, and any large meetings have been forbidden. The self-cer-
tification forms have changed many times, following the ordinances, increasingly
limiting the scope for citizens’ interpretation of the directives to be followed.

‘We are at War’: Moral Attributions of a Pandemic

The measures taken in the name of an extreme emergency are extraordinary; a
state of exception limiting individual rights that Giorgio Agamben (Agamben
2020) has immediately denounced. Agamben’s article received a lot of criticism,
inside and outside of anthropology. Some critics, for example, underlined that the
risk of contagion is real, not invented (d’Arcais 2020), and others invited reflec-
tions on how the virus would produce a state of suspension that could productively
encourage self-reflection and lead us to imagine a new and different future (Favole
2020). Isolation, according to others, would not only result in the denial of the
Other seen as a plague spreader, but it could also allow for a form of self-con-
sciousness encouraging care for the Other while waiting to fight again for a better
society (Volpi 2020). These are insightful criticisms amid an already vast debate
about the pandemic (Dei 2020).

However, Agamben was not the only one to approach this pandemic as a state of
exception. At the early stages of the spread of the contagion, media communica-
tions in Italy about the risks and consequences were often confused and unsuccess-
ful, moving on from reassuring tones to alarmist ones (Saitta 2020). Maybe as a
result, politicians started framing the pandemic with discourses that evoked a
Schmittian state of exception. Together with leading economists like Mario
Draghi (Draghi 2020), political leaders have repeatedly depicted this as an extreme
situation in which the government must allow ‘war measures. There are no half
measures’ (Zapperi 2020). In television broadcasts, discussions often slip into the
war script, and also some medical doctors, even when engaged with official state
bodies such as the Ministry of Health, invite people to be ready for ‘a long
war’ (Skytg24 2020). Every evening, the Italian civil protection broadcasts on the
TV a bulletin with the updated number of deaths, infections, and recoveries. On

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the 31st of March 2020, many municipalities in Italy hoisted their flags at half-
mast in memory of the virus victims; not only the sick but also the fallen, the doc-
tors, called by the press ‘angels in scrubs’ who fight at the front line in the war
against the virus.

The SARS-CoV-2 is a virus that, as a lethal weapon, has produced a significant

number of deaths in Italy; the containment measures adopted are based on data
considered ‘hard’ by their proponents, sacralized by medical research and quanti-
tative analytics. And yet, it is not the first time that a disease has been accompa-
nied by metaphors of war, even among doctors. The ‘invasion’ of bacteria, or the
‘war’ on cancer, have been attributions of meaning and morality that often ac-
companied the appearance of illnesses that were little understood or too shocking
because of their fatality (Hodkin 1985; Sontag 1990). If we are told that we are at
war with the COVID-19, it is necessary to identify who threatens us from within a
community once again imagined as united (Anderson 1983). Since anyone can
carry the virus, perhaps without symptoms and without being aware, the difficult
task of identifying the undisciplined ones leads, in some cases, to assuming a daily
habitus based on suspicion. In a way that recalls Edward Evans-Pritchard’s (1937)
work, one must beware of both the malicious ‘sorcerer’ and the involuntary
‘witch’. The virus is a biological agent without its own will, but the experience of
the illness (inevitably, always) overflows with meaning, as anthropologists know
well. Social scientists can contribute to highlight these less apparent aspects of the
pandemic, if not through fieldwork (tricky in times of pandemic), at least through
the extensive description of what happens around them. An example is an analysis
of that which is conveyed through social media in times of self-isolation.

‘Everyone has to Shut Down’

Discipline, Morality and Ethics in a Neighborhood of Rome
Take the example of what life looks like in a working-class neighborhood in Rome,
Torre Angela, at the times of COVID-19. Since the last Decree, many people de-
voted some of their time watching the streets from their balconies, focusing on
those who, in their opinion, did not behave in a disciplined manner. Through sto-
ries spread via WhatsApp and Facebook groups, which soon took the place of
other forbidden forms of gatherings, political representatives of the community
reported those who did not comply with the rules. People behaving in ways that
previously did not provoke particular reflections, such as going for a morning run
around the neighborhood, started to be looked at with suspicion and resentment;
they were those who, hedonistically, only thought about themselves, and did not
care about others. It did not take long before, along the runners, other categories
of disobedient citizens and behaviors emerged. Torre Angela is, indeed, a multi-
ethnic neighborhood, with many spaces, commercial activities, and religious
places, such as Christian Pentecostal churches, owned and frequented by foreign-
ers of various nationalities, among which the Nigerian one dominates. When the
shutdown of non-essential commercial activities was declared, Nigerian shops
were promptly reported by community politicians, and the police shut them and

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fined the owners (Benignetti 2020). Moreover, videos showing people of African
descent moving in the street were widely shared (De Leo 2020), often commented
ferociously by the neighborhood inhabitants (‘the rules also apply to them!’). Such ini-
tiatives, however, are far from being the exception. For example, a form is now
available on a web page of the Municipality of Rome, inviting citizens to report
defiant groups of individuals to the competent authorities (Grassi 2020).

If one wishes to recall Michel Foucault, as Agamben does, this longing for indi-
vidual discipline seems to be based on the logic and knowledge of prevention to
which individuals want to conform, adapting to what public discourses declare to
be moral and proper (Inda 2008). However, not all the inhabitants of Torre An-
gela have reacted in the same way when prompted to adhere to self-discipline, be-
coming the inspectors of Others’ behavior. Instead, the spread of the epidemic
meant that people were forced to reflect on practices that had been taken for
granted; to decide, faced with an exceptional ‘moral breakdown’ (Zigon 2007),
whether and how to become moral people, and what rules to follow; this is the eth-
ical moment. Some chose to act for the common good through different social sol-
idarity campaigns, which sought to take care of those who, for example, couldn’t
‘stay at home’ simply because they were homeless (RomaSette 2020). Others, as I
have shown, participated in this war, as presented by the media, in the role of sol-
diers, identifying the enemies responsible for putting everyone at risk because of
their selfishness. In this latter case, the ‘blame for disease turns into a crusade
against those who are feared or who, by being different, are viewed as a threat to
the established social order’ (Nelkin and Gilman 1988, 367). Often these accusa-
tions follow existing lines of conflict, as with migrants; part of the neighborhood
was perceived as consisting of outsiders even before the pandemic. In other in-
stances, the blame took the form of reprimands directed towards those who were
not willing to sacrifice themselves as the others did. From individual comments to
videos of these undisciplined bodies (one among many: ‘let’s punish them with a big
dose of the virus!’) one would infer that, along with the law, part of the population is
still motivated by an ‘irrational’ passion for revenge in the form of punishment,
‘which arouses an ambiguous excitement at the sight of people suffering for their
misdeeds’ (Fassin 2018, 85).

The Political and Economic Structures of a Pandemic

Within the national anthropological debate about the pandemic, issues of power
and inequalities associated with the health emergency are emerging, showing how
this collective crisis also represents a challenge for the authority of the state (Bene-
duce 2020; Costantini 2020; Imbergamo 2020; Schirripa 2020). Besides the moral
dilemmas posed by the pandemic to the individuals, I want to suggest here that a
comparative anthropological sight might prompt reflections on another aspect of
an ethos of risk-management so reliant on individual discipline. Comparison with
one example among many, although different in scope, time, and space from the
current situation, can help us gain a deeper understanding of discourses about
self-disciplining, so crucial in this moment, and their consequences. The example I

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want to mention is the ‘War Against Indiscipline’ (WAI) launched in Nigeria in

1985, a program that made the fight against indiscipline its cornerstone.

WAI was a measure aimed at correcting (through public shaming and punish-
ment) several individual behaviors considered at the root of society’s ills. Among
the troubles caused by indiscipline, some were related to public health, such as fail-
ing to use rubbish bins and defecating in public. However, the government had
never built an adequate infrastructure for the disposal system, and amid an eco-
nomic austerity plan, the few public toilets had become fee-based. According to
some scholars, by focusing on the individual, WAI exonerated the government
from its responsibilities regarding the situation experienced by the population
(Stock 2007).

Today, in the social groups of Torre Angela, one can notice popular and shared
formulas such as ‘if it won’t go well, the fault is of those who weren’t able to control them-
selves.’ Even a well-known scientific television presenter, Piero Angela, stated that
the problem is that ‘Italians are undisciplined by nature’ (Cauti 2020). I am not suggest-
ing an alternative to the preventive measures already in place. My concern is that,
as it happened with the WAI, reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic might place
too much emphasis on individual responsibility, overshadowing the political and
economic reasons behind the current collapse of the Italian healthcare system: the
systematic underfunding of the public healthcare system, and the austerity mea-
sures in the last decade. This question is slowly emerging in the Italian press,
which retraced years of expenditure cuts in the public healthcare system, which
resulted in a reduced ability to face the pandemic; as in a shortage of medical
equipment for the doctors and intensive care places (Affinito 2020). It is precisely
in times of crisis that we must look critically at the system and the measures im-
plemented in the name of the good, and the ways in which they can dramatically
transform our societies and relations to each other; we should not let ourselves be
seduced by the quick-fix solutions of increased control, punishment, surveillance,
shaming and blaming of individuals. This is the opposite of a position of solidari-
ty.

In Italy, the idea that the political, social, and economic crisis caused by
COVID-19 might, in the end, lead to abandoning discourses of blame and instead
reimagining our societies and our relationship with the environment is gaining ter-
rain (Moreno et al. 2020; Moretti 2020). It is too early to know what the world will
look like after the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps we will go back to the neoliberal
and global ‘normal,’ or policies towards new extraordinary measures of control
and discipline will prevail – with which individuals will have to engage – or we can
take this opportunity to imagine new possible futures and break away from the
‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher 2009), and with it from the individualization of blame,
instead aiming at structural change. Public intellectuals and anthropologists should
contribute to imagining these alternative futures.

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