Imagining Extinction inside Viral Body without Organs

Abstract

Virus, in the form of a preassigned body without organs, predates the arrival of human species, and evolved on earth approximately three billion years ago, currently having an estimated variation of hundred million types. Humans form an insignificant subsection of the ‘virosphere’ (Crawford). Equipped with the knowledge of all organisms, the SARS-CoV-2 (my focus in this paper) virus combines with angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) which in turn identifies the tissues vulnerable to the infection. Once in the cell, it expropriates the cell’s mechanism, makes numerous copies of itself and invades other cells. Immune cells in the battle against the virus disrupt the flow of oxygen to all other parts of the body. In most cases, there is inflammation of the alveolus, its broken walls lessen oxygen intake, and the patient ends up in the ventilator. Eventually, the virus strikes all the organs with differing intensities– the lungs, the heart, the brain, the kidneys, the gut, the eyes. The animal virus merging with its human counterpart mirrors “interkingdoms, unnatural participations” where “Nature operates– against itself” (Deleuze and Guattari). Virus is anti-genealogy. Viruses bring the human and the non-human others together in a rhizomatic relation where genetic information and DNA are exchanged. Viruses, as BwO, de-structure the essential frame and subjectivity of humans. Both the human individual and viruses share a common plane where none possesses any essential reality and unfolds as an interactive space for multiple organic and inorganic exchanges. The only “enemy” of the virus is the organism, and as indeterminate, pure lawlessness it attacks the fundamental organization– the cellular and the molecular. Like the body without organs, viruses are anonymous/acephalous with its undying insistence to repeat/multiply and maximize connections. Virus is pure desire oriented towards reducing the infected body to its elemental form (compost/ash and others). Each organ transmutes into a body reacting against other bodies and against the whole body containing all organs. Claire Colebrook observes that a virus is so alive, “so lacking in boundaries and limits” that it does not qualify as a living being. My paper seeks to investigate the role of the virus in reducing/expanding the human to such an extent that it becomes one with the ground, and returns to its originary existence. I further propose that pandemics throughout history have initiated a re-imagination of human continuance; pandemics activate the human-toward-extinction by inducing the immortal virus through (consumed/to be consumed/ living) animals within the human.