Abstract

This essay studies the COVID‑19 pandemic as an instance of the concept of the event used by post-Marxist thought. Due to this premise, the article presents three sections: 1) the event concept in the post-Marxist thinking, 2) the COVID‑19 pandemic as a post-Marxist event, and 3) the pandemic as a virtual event. Such an essay requires a concept of the event. It is defined in this context as a phenomenon without causal explanation but with the capacity to explain, at least partially, the future it creates. For a while after the end of the Cold War, it was thought that the event would be the result of capitalism's prevalent crisis. The 2008 financial crisis meant to be its point of no return. But this crisis did not reach the event condition. The COVID‑19 pandemic shares some features of the event framed into the biopolitics.