The Viral Politics of Covid-19: Nature, Home, and Planetary Health (Biolegalities)

This book critically examines the COVID-19 pandemic and its legal and biological governance using a multidisciplinary approach. The perspectives reflected in this volume investigate the imbrications between technosphere and biosphere at social, economic, and political levels. The biolegal dimensions of our evolving understanding of "home" are analysed as the common thread linking the problem of zoonotic diseases and planetary health with that of geopolitics, biosecurity, bioeconomics and biophilosophies of the plant-animal-human interface. In doing so, the contributions collectively highlight the complexities, challenges, and opportunities for humanity, opening new perspectives on how to inhabit our shared planet. This volume will broadly appeal to scholars and students in anthropology, cultural and media studies, history, philosophy, political science and public health, sociology and science and technology studies. Vanessa Lemm (PhD) is a Research Fellow at the Research Group: Body, Language and Politics (CLEPO), Faculty of Philosophy, Complutense University of Madrid. Miguel Vatter is Professor of Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization, Deakin University, Australia Foreword 6 Acknowledgments 9 Contents 10 List of Contributors 13 Introduction 15 Part I: Biosecurity and Planetary Health 26 Cryopolitics of SARS-CoV-2: Biosecurity in Laboratories and Wet Markets 27 The Hypothesis of Imported Frozen Products 28 The Wet Market Hypothesis 29 The Hypothesis of the Laboratory Accident 32 References 35 From Global to Planetary Health: Two Morphologies of Pandemic Preparedness 38 International to Global Health 39 The Global Virome 43 COVID-19: A Success for Global Health Security? 46 From Influenza Epicenter to Planetary Health 48 Two Morphologies: From Global to Planetary Health 50 References 51 COVID-19 and the Contradictions of Planetary Health: Envisioning New Paradigms 55 The Problem with Plastics 56 Lifting the Veil on Food System Pathologies 60 Revisioning the ‘Planetary’ and the ‘Health’ in Planetary Health 63 Conclusion 69 References 69 Part II: Bio-social Dimensions of Public Health 73 A Foucauldian Moment or the Longue Durée? COVID-19 in Context 74 On the Politics of Time in Biopolitical Narratives 74 Silent Chronologies at Work in Social Theory 76 Counter-Histories and the Will to Ignore Them 81 Plural Regimes of Biopolitics in Deep Time 82 Conclusion: COVID-19, the Premodern/Modern Boundary, and the Epigenetics of History 87 References 88 Zoonoses and Medicine as Social Science: Implications of Rudolf Virchow’s Work for Understanding Global Pandemics 93 Rudolf Virchow’s Social Understanding of Disease 93 Social Medicine 95 Cellular Pathology 97 Zoonosis 99 The Role of the Physician 101 Rethinking Virchow’s Contributions in COVID-19 Times 102 Conclusion 106 References 107 Living in Peace with Coronaviruses 112 Naming the Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 113 Beyond the Biosecurity Paradigm 115 Virology After the Cold War 116 Viruses as Terrorists, Zombies, and Symbionts 119 Conclusion: Only the Minority Suffer 122 References 125 Part III: Social Distancing and Community 129 The Micropolitics of Social Distancing: Habit, Contagion and the Suggestive Realm 130 Habits, Humans and Infrastructures 134 The Suggestive Realm and Contagion 137 Conclusion 142 References 143 Visceral Publics and Social Power: Crowd Politics in the Time of a Pandemic 145 The Social Body and the Physical Crowd 147 Governmentality and the Capture of the Social 154 References 159 Ideologies of Contagion and Communities of Life 161 Contagious Ideologies: Hope for an ‘Aufbruch’ Toward a New Revolution 161 Dangerous Infection: The Return of Humanism 164 Diagnosing Sickness: The Future of an Illusion 167 Communities of Life 169 References 173 Part IV: Pandemic Neoliberalism 176 Contradictions of the Bailout State 177 Introduction 177 Capital’s Democracy 182 Reframing the Keynesian Welfare State 184 From Welfare to Bailout State 185 Conclusion 188 References 191 The Neoliberal Virus 194 Rethinking Everything 194 The Neoliberal State of Nature 197 An Anthropocene Disease 199 Epidemic Frontiers 201 Speculative Natures 204 References 206 Part V: Pandemic Habitats 214 Biometric Re-bordering: Environmental Control During Pandemic Times 215 Biometric Borders During Pandemic Times 216 Digital Enclosures 219 Expanding Borders and the Grand Disaggregation 222 Metagovernance: Post-Disciplinary Modalities of Control 226 Environmentality 229 References 230 Planetary Health and the Biopolitics of Home 233 Introduction 233 Political Space and Conceptions of Home 235 The Planetary Dimension and Its Biopolitics 237 From Habitability to Milieu and Back 241 Technosphere, Sensory Society, and Manhattan Principles of One Health 245 Pandemic Bordering and the Biolegality of Mobility 249 References 254 Creative Responses to COVID-19 259 Part I: It Comes in Waves 259 Part II: The Cure 264 References 270 Index 272