Viral Becomings

From Mechanical Viruses to Viral (Dis)Entanglements in Preventing Global Disease

Bibliographic Data

ID6147076
AuthorsNadine Voelkner (0000-0002-4310-8025, University of Groningen, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume2
Issue3
Publication date2022-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGlobal Studies Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2634-3797 • E-ISSN: 2634-3797
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/isagsq/ksac046
OpenAlexW4296067528
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited59

This paper explores the contribution of an ethos of (dis)entanglement arising from quantum thought to interpreting and (re)acting on the current global pandemic of Covid-19. The Covid-19 pandemic is giving rise to a world of pandemic separation, in which infection barriers such as masks, disinfection, social distancing, and isolation may be necessary in the immediate moment of avoiding sickness and death. However, these exclusionary and short-term response mechanisms do not address the larger question relating to global interspecies living, which in its current dynamic is increasingly giving rise to newly emerging infectious diseases such as Covid-19. The Covid-19 pandemic is showing that the health of human beings is deeply entangled with that of other species and places. However, it is also showing the limits to the mechanistic ontology driving modern public health thinking. I build on the work by political ecologists of health and biosocial scholars, especially Frost's concept of biocultural emergence and her engagement with ontological plurality in the human subject, to make the case for a different global politics of disease in preventing the emergence of infectious disease

Biology · Biosocial theory · Cognitive reframing · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Disease · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ethos · Infectious disease (medical specialty · Isolation (microbiology · Pandemic · Political science · Politics · Public health · Sociology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Medicine · Psychology · Race, Genetics, and Society · Zoonotic diseases and public health · Law · Philosophy · Social Psychology · Virology