This article aims to start discussing Diário da Peste by Gonçalo M. Tavares, a set of texts published in Expresso between March and June 2020. It is considered the way in which, in this elusive language, the author, based on news, reflects about the ongoing conflict between efficiency and desire. It also questions the way in which politics, focusing on the vital minimum, neglects human happiness. Based on Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, we also seek to discuss that the intrinsic violence of biopolitical devices, even though these mechanisms are at the heart of both technical and scientific progress. Other related philosophical and political issues are discussed from Bruce Nauman’s, Boris Achour’s and Santiago Sierra’s art.Este arti...