Transfections of animal touch, techniques of biosecurity

Abstract

Animal touch – in the broadest sense, biological touch across species lines – emerges as a biosecurity threat within contemporary contexts of pandemic alert. At the same time, animal touch is increasingly invested with therapeutic, healing value within neoliberal economies of affect. This article develops two genealogies of animal touch toward historicizing the way it has come to mean and matter in the present. The first genealogy traces the production of animal touch as a biohazard during the 2009 swine flu scare as well as the increasingly environmental techniques of biosecurity that emerged to “conduct” or govern the risks of animal touch, giving specific attention to hand sanitizer. The second traces the installation of petting areas within the space of the modern zoo, areas specifically devoted to animal touch as a technology of affect. Whether animal touch is framed as a matter of biosecurity or pursued for its tenderizing and therapeutic effects, at stake in the biopolitical practices of both hand sanitation and petting is the phantasmatic sovereignty of the human hand over the sense of touch.