Lessons from the Viral Body Politic: Borders and the Possibilities of a More-than-Human Worldmaking

Abstract

Abstract Bordering practices have been a central and controversial feature of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Closed borders, lockdowns, and restrictions on movement and individual “freedoms” have revived concepts of the biopolitical “state of exception” and state control. In this article, we argue that biopolitical critiques of responses to the pandemic fail to grasp the opportunity to rethink worldmaking and instead base their critiques on a desired “return to normal” which foregrounds human-centric individualism at the expense of alternative worldmaking that accounts for the more-than-human. To do so, we bring the virus and the virome into our discussion to rethink bordering practices and how the SARS-CoV-2 virus affects bodies, worlds, and politics. We focus primarily on the Australian case, where the pandemic response began with lockdowns and then gave way to a militarized and individualistic approach. Responses to the pandemic have failed to produce a reimagining of human and more-than-human relations. Opportunities for ethical engagement have been missed, resulting in limited responses that stem from the failure of state capacity and entrenched modes of inequality that are harmful to vulnerable others, both human and more-than-human. This requires an ontological reframing of how we relate to a complex world from a more-than-human perspective.