Abstract
At an Italian conference in 2003, Saramago described Blindness (and announced Seeing)1 as a “context allegory,” which narrates “simultaneously […] a reality too radical to be true and […] a reality which, given due abstractions, is what we deal with every day” (Saramago 2022a: 156). I understood the true meaning of his words when re-reading the two novels during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the same period, the philosopher Giorgio Agamben questioned the reality of the pandemic.
Chapter PDF
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Open Access. Creative Commons-Lizenz 4.0 (BY-NC-ND).
Weitere Informationen finden Sie unter https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Copyright information
© 2023 Frank & Timme GmbH
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sabbatini, C. (2023). Saramago, Agamben, and the ‘Invention of an Epidemic’. In: Baltrusch, B., Salzani, C., Vanhoutte, K. (eds) A Responsibility to the World: Saramago, Politics, Philosophy. iBroLiT – Estudos Iberorrománicos de Literatura e Tradutoloxía. Ibero-Romance Studies in Literature and Translatology, vol 9. Frank & Timme, Berlin. https://doi.org/10.57088/978-3-7329-8985-0_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.57088/978-3-7329-8985-0_7
Publisher Name: Frank & Timme, Berlin
Online ISBN: 978-3-7329-8985-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)