Viral Becomings: From Mechanical Viruses to Viral (Dis)Entanglements in Preventing Global Disease

Abstract

Abstract This paper explores the contribution of an ethos of (dis)entanglement arising from quantum thought to interpreting and (re)acting on the current global pandemic of Covid-19. The Covid-19 pandemic is giving rise to a world of pandemic separation, in which infection barriers such as masks, disinfection, social distancing, and isolation may be necessary in the immediate moment of avoiding sickness and death. However, these exclusionary and short-term response mechanisms do not address the larger question relating to global interspecies living, which in its current dynamic is increasingly giving rise to newly emerging infectious diseases such as Covid-19. The Covid-19 pandemic is showing that the health of human beings is deeply entangled with that of other species and places. However, it is also showing the limits to the mechanistic ontology driving modern public health thinking. I build on the work by political ecologists of health and biosocial scholars, especially Frost's concept of biocultural emergence and her engagement with ontological plurality in the human subject, to make the case for a different global politics of disease in preventing the emergence of infectious disease.