Solidarity Between Species

Frederic Keck 지음

Polity 2025년 05월 06일 출간

작품소개

책소개

This book examines how the Covid-19 pandemic can be described as a biopolitical crisis, taking into account a fact often overlooked by commentators: Covid-19 is a zoonosis, a disease transmissible between animal species. The Sars-Cov2 virus causing this respiratory disease circulated in bats before passing to humans under as-yet mysterious conditions, and it was transmitted from humans to other species, notably mink and deer. Building on Michel Foucault’s revival of the term “biopolitics” and related notions (disciplinary power, pastoral power, cynegetic power), this book traces a set of public health measures taken over the last two centuries to control epidemics. It underlines how the need to conserve virus strains in order to identify and anticipate their mutations has given rise to cryopolitics, a set of techniques aimed at suspending the living in order to defer death. The book then questions the emancipatory scope of this cryopolitics by examining interspecies solidarity built by the warning signals sent by animals to humans about coming threats, be they pandemics, natural disasters, or climate change. By blurring the boundaries between the wild and the domestic resulting from the process of domestication, the politics of zoonoses relies on sentinels who preserve the memory of signs from the past to prepare living beings for future threats by involving them in a common ideal.

목차

Opening: Covid-19 displayed as pandemic and zoonosisIntroduction: Wild thought about biopolitics1. Biopower: disciplining individuals, regulating populationsa. Public hygiene and mental healthb. Biotechnologies, biosecurity and biolegitimacy2. Pastoral power: watching over humans like sheepa. A benevolent and sacrificial powerb. Veterinary medicine and breeders' knowledges3. Cynegetic power: catching the preys' perspectivesa. Colonial slavery and hunting societiesb. Virus hunters and disease reservoirs4. Cryopolitics: preserving living collectionsa. The mutations of influenza virusesb. The cold chain in markets and laboratoriesc. Storing living beings in reserves and museums5. Planetary health: anticipating disasters with animalsa. Responsibility: from pandemics to global warmingb. Participation: the ideal of justice through war6. Sentinels: building a new form of solidaritya. The frontiers of the immune systemb. Remembering the signs of the past to prepare for future disastersConclusion: Environmental pathologies, animal studies and the critique of capitalism

출판사 서평

“Keck provides a majestic and urgently needed synthesis of biopolitical and ontological approaches to zoonoses from a multi-species perspective.”Christos Lynteris, University of St. Andrews“Through a rich study of how political and scientific forces have responded to pandemics, Keck weaves a refreshingly original, and ultimately hopeful, approach: rather than concentrating on eradication or control, it might be worth learning to understand what other species are communicating.”Sarah Green, University of Helsinki

작가정보

저자(글) Frederic Keck