Gradhiva n° 39 - Recherches artistiques sur les restes humains

Description

How do zoonoses, infectious animal diseases that can be transmitted to humans, such as rabies, tuberculosis, avian flu, and COVID-19, change our conceptions of politics, power, and emancipation? Without the recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, this question might not have gained such urgency...

How do zoonoses, infectious animal diseases that can be transmitted to humans, such as rabies, tuberculosis, avian flu, and COVID-19, change our conceptions of politics, power, and emancipation? Without the recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, this question might not have acquired the acuity and urgency that characterize it today. According to numerous scientific reports, the number and scale of these zoonoses are set to increase, as they are directly linked to climate change and the rapid decline in biodiversity. It is common in environmental circles to interpret the proliferation of viruses as nature's revenge for the mistreatment humans inflict on it.

Some conspiracy theorists believe this is a battle between powers over biological weapons. By focusing on contemporary pandemic preparedness practices, this book takes a completely different approach. For the past twenty years, the "virus hunt," invented a century ago, has given way to a different approach, in which animals play a prominent role as potential emitters of warning signals, traces of which are stored in freezers and databases. Through the figure of the animal sentinel, another relationship between humans and non-humans is emerging, one in which solidarity already exists while remaining an ideal to be achieved. A new form of solidarity, or even a new form of socialism, could result.