Subjectivity in the Age of Pandemics

James Mensch

doi:10.1515/opth-2020-0148

Abstract

Abstract The current pandemic that originated in a “wet” market in Wuhan has often been compared to the threat we face with climate change. The former originated in the trade in wild animals, which has driven many species to the point of extinction. In fact, we face an unprecedented rate of species loss due to pressures on habitats, pollution, and human predation. The threat of climate change originates with our uncontrolled use of fossil fuels, which, in making large parts of the globe uninhabitable, imperils our own species. The rationality (or lack thereof) that is exhibited here concerns our relation to the earth. We regard it simply as a means for our purposes. Separating ourselves from it, we follow the Biblical injunction to have “dominion” over it. In this, we express a conception of subjectivity that is exemplified by Descartes and Kant. To overcome this, I argue, we need a different sense of what it means to be a subject, one that takes it as a sustaining ground and points to the earth as the ultimate subject.

Highlights

At the end of the 2011 film, Contagion, we see a bat hanging from atop an open air market, somewhere in China
The current pandemic that originated in a “wet” market in Wuhan has often been compared to the threat we face with climate change
We face an unprecedented rate of species loss due to pressures on habitats, pollution, and human predation

Summary

Introduction

At the end of the 2011 film, Contagion, we see a bat hanging from atop an open air market, somewhere in China. Among the live animals for sale there, one suspect was a shy, scaly mammal called a pangolin, who feeds on ants These animals have been driven almost to extinction because their meat is considered a delicacy. Rationality, here, consists in using the earth and its resources, including the other species, in a sustainable way. This includes limiting the negative effects of such use. Development, sustainable or not, still regards the earth as a store of raw materials for our purposes It continues to define it in terms of its utility. My thesis will be that it relies on a conception of what it means to be a self or a subject that is fundamentally different from the account that has prevailed since Descartes’ time

The modern subject

An alternate conception of subjectivity