Uploaded : June 2020

Keywords:
Pietro Barbetta, COVID-19, Bacchus, Dionysus, Antigone, Oedipus, Athens, Thebes, Anthropocene, Collective unconscious, Ethics, Difference, Sexuality.

Pietro Barbetta

Pietro Barbetta is Director of the Milan Center of Family Therapy. He teaches Psychodynamic Theories at the University of Bergamo, member of the World Association for Cultural Psychiatry (WACP) and President of the Lombardy section of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approach to Psychosis (ISPS). He is responsible of the "clinical" section for the online magazine Doppiozero, recently wrote essays on Connessioni, Riflessioni Sistemiche (AIEMS), kasparhauser.net, http://tysm.org, Human Systems, Open Journal of Social Sciences, Trauma and Memory (http://www.eupsycho.com), Locus Solus. (https://www.cmtf.it/il-team/pietro-barbetta/)

Abstract

In my essay, I write about the phenomenon of COVID-19 as an example of what during those 20 years has been insistently called the Anthropocene. It is interesting that the few people, who use this term -remarking the increasing deforestation, the multiple violations of the Earth under the action of international companies, the increase of pollution, war and nationalism all over the world- conclude that the viruses, and this one, in particular, is an Earth reaction to the Anthropocene and, at the same time, one of the consequences of the Anthropocene itself. My personal experience of COVID-19 disease becomes a point of departure for a long and strange imaginary journey through the experience of the classical Greek tragedy, from the point of view of the wise polis of Athens, where tragedy was staged, and Thebes, the place where hybris was performed.