Pain, Pleasure, and the Mirror of Enjoyment

This chapter opens by explaining the mirror of enjoyment, while each subsequent section explains this concept at work in relation to a unique anecdote drawn from the COVID-19 era. The first is about sadistic pleasure and discusses police officers’ resistance to vaccine mandates nationwide. Here, enjoyment takes the familiar form of ressentiment, a revenge taken out upon both self and other. The second is the zero-sum-game, which places Giorgio Agamben alongside the deep state conspiracy mongering of Alex Jones and Joe Rogan. Here, enjoyment manifests as state phobia, a paranoid rejection of governing institutions. The final section, titled ill-liberalism and the drive, stages an imaginary dialogue between Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics and Robert F. Kennedy’s The Real Anthony Fauci, both of which bespeak a faith in rational governing norms while perpetuating the continued politicization of governing institutions and infectious disease response alike.