Cryopolitics of SARS-CoV-2: Biosecurity in Laboratories and Wet Markets

Abstract

The debate on the origins of COVID-19 raises important questions on biosecurity: how should the circulation of living materials be controlled in such a way that it does not cause the emergence of new infectious agents? This question mobilized a range of experts who assessed the risks of emergence in the different spaces where living material circulates. COVID-19 has been described as an emerging infectious disease of probable animal origin, which distinguishes it from zoonoses naturally transmitted across vertebrate species. The World Health Organization published a report in February 2021 investigating the different scenarios for the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. From an anthropological perspective, these different past scenarios can be considered as imaginaries of the future in spaces where regulations will be imposed. If rules of biosecurity aim to prepare contemporary societies for zoonotic viruses, how do these rules express changing relations between humans and non-human animals in these societies? How do experts on biosecurity imagine material exchanges between humans and animals in spaces of biological accumulation such as laboratories, farms and markets? In this chapter, I will argue that this imaginary mobilizes the cold chain as a technique of conservation of living material which casts anew the question of domestication.KeywordsBiosecurityZoonosisWet marketsCryopoliticsMichel Foucault