Institution

The pandemic has brought into sharp relief the fundamental relationship between institution and human life: at the very moment when the virus was threatening to destroy life, human beings called upon institutions – on governments, on health systems, on new norms of behavior – to combat the virus and preserve life.Drawing on this and other examples, Roberto Esposito argues that institutions and human life are not opposed to one another but rather two sides of a single figure that, together, delineate the vital character of institutions and the instituting power of life.What else is life, after all, if not a continuous institution, a capacity for self-regeneration along new and unexplored paths?No human life is reducible to pure survival, to “bare life.” There is always a point at which life reaches out beyond primary needs, entering into the realm of desires and choices, passions and projects, and at that point human life becomes instituted: it becomes part of the web of relations that constitute social, political, and cultural life.