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From Cynegetic Power to Cryopolitics: Hypotheses on the Biopolitics of Virus Hunters

  • New School of Social Research: Wolff Conference Room (11th floor) 6 East 16th Street New York, NY, 10003 United States (map)

Lecture by Frédéric Keck, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales co-organized by the Recovery working group. For the last fifty years, following the paradigms of ecology of infectious diseases and « One Health », virologists have collected samples from non-human animals to anticipate spillover events causing pandemics among humans. This daily work of monitoring, moving between farms, markets, borders and laboratories, has introduced animals in human communities as sentinels perceiving early warning signals, by contrast with spectacular killings of suspicious animals which redraw the boundaries between humans and animals. This talk will ask what kind of biopolitics emerges from such a surveillance of animals for pandemic preparedness. Discussing authors such as Chamayou, Mbembe, Descola, Povinelli, Landecker and Caduff, it will test the hypothesis that modernity is a shift not only from sovereign power to biopolitics, but also from cynegetic power to cryopolitics.