----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Thank you Renate, Jonathan, and Elizabeth, and to Junting for inviting me
to participate. I've really appreciated the thoughtful and measured, yet
personal reflections in my first weeks at empyre as I have been attempting
to limit my consumption of news media. However, ironically, the more
isolated we become from each other as people, from borders closing, and
subsequently this week a bill enforcing a 28 days "circuit breaker" [
https://www.gov.sg/article/covid-19-circuit-breaker-heightened-safe-distancing-measures-to-reduce-movement]
where households are prohibited from mingling, enforcing "social
distancing," the more we are forced to consume news if only to keep abreast
of the law.
The rhetoric about the pandemic in Singapore has been driven largely by a
paternalistic state, which has been sending reassuring messages to the
public while taking measures in phases. The first phase was during the
initial outbreak in Wuhan, when travellers from the region were barred from
entering or transiting in Singapore. These restrictions were expanded to
other affected regions as the centers of the spikes were identified, so
Europe and the ASEAN followed by the USA. The narrative was that the threat
was coming externally and that by isolating travellers and returning
citizens it could be contained. The government had been encouraging working
from home and two weeks ago closed bars and nightclubs, barring public or
private gatherings of over 10 people. Schools remained open, sending a
mixed message to citizens who were wearing masks and using sanitizer and
hoarding toilet paper. My daughter has only started "Home Based Learning"
three days ago this Wednesday, the day after the circuit breaker bill was
passed.
The xenophobia towards the Chinese that was seen in February began to abate
as the concerns shifted more internally. The Singaporean population a
majority of Chinese ethnicity calls Chinese nationals "PRCs" and considers
them "other," often resentful of new immigrants and is expressed on the
"blogosphere" and other informal channels. [
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Singaporeans-call-Chinese-people-PRCs]
The past few days, the focus has shifted to a different foreign threat.
Foreign workers, largely South Asian, who work in construction and
maintenance services in Singapore.
https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/covid-19-record-287-new-cases-spore-219-infections-linked-dorms-foreign-workers-who-had-visited
https://www.ricemedia.co/current-affairs-features-chaos-confusion-migrant-workers-fears-safety-salaries-covid-19/
There was even a kerfuffle where a former minister was embarrassed for
calling out foreign workers for gathering at an open field on Sundays their
day off saying residents were often inconvenienced by these gatherings and
that "it takes a virus to empty the space".
https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/yaacob-ibrahim-apologises-facebook-remark-foreign-workers-gathering-near-kallang-mrt
The situation of bodies, governed by ethnicities and "place-ness", within
the microcosm of a society organised by the vector of "the economy" has
come to the forefront of thought and discussion with the emergence of
Covid-19 as a threat to "life": sustaining the life of bodies, the lived
experience of communities, the "health" of the economy, and what is hoped
can be eliminated...the epidemiological life of the Covid-19 coronavirus.
In this arrangement, I look to my friends Jonathan (as a reader of
biological science like myself) and Elizabeth (who, amongst other things,
has worked on aspects of racial representation in migrant diasporas).
As a reader of Derrida, I tend to agree with Jonathan on the paradoxical
nature of the scientific understanding of "life" and what we might infer
from it. Thank you for putting it so beautifully: "It is impossible to
render oneself entirely immune to viruses without eliminating the life in
oneself."
I am finding that, in Singapore and perhaps all over the world, the threat
of contagion is linked essentially to an "other." At the most basic level
this other is the "coronavirus" but also, more distinctly, the concern is
who is carrying it as a host. For me, this distinction is an iteration of
the basic distinction between mind/body, self-other, that is outlined by
Derrida as "autoimmunity." The autoimmune thought in this way is a
condition that constitutes conscious life. I have been thinking for some
time that when Derrida states that “the living ego is auto-immune,”
(Specters of Marx, 141) he describes a constitutive operation of the self
that is an intervention in the thinking of the relation between “natural
life” and “life of the spirit” and is an update to the understanding of
Cartesian “dualism” which often stands in as the figure of rationality and
allows something like the study of bodies that is "biology."
What's intriguing now with the rhetoric and practice of life in a global
pandemic might be how the distinctions between viral life and embodied
life, and the factor of bodies as the medium of contagion, intertwine on
different circuits: scientific/medical, social/political, and
economic/capital. As the policing and erection of borders heightened, the
more they highlight the dependence of life as we know it on the
transgression of these lines. Derrida's *Rogues* is particularly poignant
here.
I hear those that rejoice the recovery of nature in the wake of the slowing
of industrial production, the highlighting of the ethics of labour
practices in capitalism, and the vast inequalities between people that have
come to light. However, I am concerned about how these issues are to be
addressed. As issues that we in the humanities and arts especially have
been talking about and working on for decades, what now that we have
the attention of the world for what is perhaps a brief moment? Can we
recover from predatory capitalism? How will we cope without work or means
of subsistence? Must our generation be sacrificed in order to take the time
to build new ways of living? Can we trust those in charge to create a new
way of being for us?
These questions occupy.
My warmest wishes to everyone,
Sorelle
https://nus.academia.edu/SorelleHenricus
On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 5:06 AM Jonathan Basile <jonathan.e.bas...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Dear all,
>
> Thank you to Junting and Renate for inviting me and to all the guests this
> week. I'm very excited to take part.
>
> A while ago, my dissertation research on scientific and philosophical
> definitions of life brought me to focus on viruses, which, ever since a
> pathogen was given this name, have always problematized the boundaries
> between the organic and inorganic, life and death. While it doesn’t speak
> directly to all of the ethical and political issues raised by the COVID
> pandemic, it has shaped my thinking about aspects of the crisis. In short,
> the thing that makes us vulnerable to viruses is the thing that makes us
> alive.
>
> Our knowledge of viruses was necessarily quite abstract at first - when it
> was found that an agent of disease could pass through filters small enough
> to trap bacteria these germs were called "viruses," a word that meant
> poison but whose oldest meaning in English was "semen."
>
> In 1935 a virus was crystallized for the first time, meaning quite
> literally that a population of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus was formed into a
> crystal by heating and cooling. This grabbed headlines because up to that
> time it was assumed there was an absolute distinction between organic and
> inorganic matter (life and death), but viruses were thought to be organic
> and crystals inorganic. The synthesis of urea from inorganic chemicals was
> another milestone in proving this boundary permeable.
>
> Since molecular biology and the deciphering of the "genetic code," life
> has been understood as what copies itself by storing instructions for
> reproducing itself in its genes. Viruses have complicated this definition
> of life because they clearly contain such instructions, but cannot copy
> "themselves" without "hijacking" the machinery of another cell.
>
> Some theorists and biologists therefore say they are not alive. Sometimes
> this leads to the funny locution that they are not alive *because they
> are parasites*. This may strike us as odd—aren’t parasites alive? If we
> bear down on the question, we find that in fact no life form can persist
> without taking something in from the environment and from other living
> things, and that in fact this responsiveness to the environment (sometimes
> called purposiveness) is the very definition of life.
>
> Viruses are able to use us as machines because we are machines to
> ourselves. We are able to live because we can rely on the functioning of
> our own cellular machinery. Without the hospitality that makes us
> vulnerable to viruses, our own life would be impossible.
>
> The signs of this are everywhere. One hypothesis (though it is not a
> consensus view) of the origin of life (abiogenesis) posits that the
> earliest not-quite-living things were viruses, and that life as we know it
> originated as a defense against their intrusions upon free-floating
> nucleotide chains. This is known as the Virus World theory.
>
> Furthermore, some of the most basic means of genetic transfer and
> continuity among the earliest lifeforms rely upon certain viruses
> (bacteriophages). And these transfers continue between viruses and all the
> kingdoms of life, in what can’t even be called inter-species
> hybridization but, according to prevalent theories, are matings of life
> with non-life. Ten percent of the human genome is thought to have derived
> from genes deposited in us by viruses, many of which provide beneficial
> contributions to our organism.
>
> Viruses are the origin of life and its continuity, and what makes us
> vulnerable to the worst is also what grants us the possibility of the best.
> Gene therapy, a cutting edge method for treating diseases that involves
> implanting genes in our genome, depends on viruses as a gene delivery
> system. Either a virus has its genetic material removed and synthetic genes
> implanted in it, or a synthetic carrier is constructed that is modeled
> after a virus.
>
> While this doesn’t speak directly to the particular political corruption
> and incompetence exacerbating the COVID-19 pandemic, it is not entirely
> divorced from an ethico-political reflection on our current crisis. It is
> impossible to render oneself entirely immune to viruses without eliminating
> the life in oneself. And it is not simply a metaphorical application of
> this principle to say that while there are good methods of prevention (e.g.
> social distancing) against bad viruses, the same logic quickly becomes its
> opposite. Any intervention that tries to focus aid within our own borders,
> as if nothing could cross them (for example, sanctions preventing medical
> supplies from reaching Iran, or stealing PPE from other countries
> <https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/03/ppe-world-supplies-coronavirus-163955>),
> can only exacerbate the pandemic here.
>
> Virality is vitality, for better and for worse.
>
> Best,
> Jonathan Basile
> Tar for Mortar: The Library of Babel and the Dream of Totality
> <https://punctumbooks.com/titles/tar-for-mortar/> || em português
> <https://punctumbooks.com/titles/massa-por-argamassa-a-biblioteca-de-babel-e-o-sonho-de-totalidade/>
> jonathanbasile.info || libraryofbabel.info
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 12:46 PM Renate Ferro <rfe...@cornell.edu> wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> Many thanks to our special guests Christina McPhee and Melinda Rackham.
>> Also to William Bain, Simon, Aviva Rahmani, Brett Stalbaum, Cengiz Salman,
>> Gary Hall and of course my two fellow moderators Tim Murray and Junting
>> Huang for posting this past week. The tone this week has been
>> introspective yet also critical of the political, social, and cultural
>> conditions so many of us are facing globally. We welcome our next set of
>> invited guests Jonathan Basile, Sorelle Henricus, Gloria Kim, Cengiz
>> Salman, Paul Vanouse, and Elizabeth Wijiaya. We invite you all to share
>> your thoughts about your own work and experiences from where you are
>> writing this week. Looking forward to hearing from all of you and again
>> please be well and stay safe.
>>
>> Also, just to throw this out Christina McPhee had a great idea. If any
>> of you are making COVID inspired work or work that is generated from our
>> current situation please feel free to post links within the empyre text but
>> also to post on our FACEBOOK page.
>> https://www.facebook.com/groups/empyrelistserv/
>>
>> Best to you all,
>> Renate Ferro
>>
>> Week 2: Biographies
>> Jonathan Basile is a Ph.D. Candidate in Emory University’s Comparative
>> Literature program and the creator of an online universal library,
>> libraryofbabel.info. His first book, Tar for Mortar: “The Library of
>> Babel” and the Dream of Totality, has been published by punctum books and
>> translated into Portuguese. His academic writing on biodeconstruction and
>> on irony has been published in the Oxford Literary Review, Critical
>> Inquiry, Derrida Today, Variaciones Borges, Environmental Philosophy,
>> Postmodern Culture, CR: The New Centennial Review and is forthcoming in
>> Angelaki. His para-academic writing has been published in The Paris Review
>> Daily, Public Books, Berfrois, Guernica, and minor literature[s]. This work
>> can be accessed at jonathanbasile.info.
>>
>> Sorelle Henricus works in the areas of critical theory, modern and
>> contemporary literature and visual arts, and aesthetics and politics
>> especially as it pertains to science and technology in culture. Her
>> doctoral work traced the significance of the parallels between
>> deconstruction and molecular biology, particularly converging around the
>> concept of the gene as being constructed as primarily an artefact of data.
>>
>> Gloria Kim is Assistant Professor of Media and Culture at the University
>> of California-Riverside. She works in the areas of the environmental
>> humanites, science and technology studies, and media and visual culture.
>> She is currently writing a book manuscript titled "The Microbial Resolve:
>> Vision, Mediation, and Security," in which she explores modes of
>> mediation, forms of kinship, means of capital, and senses of life and
>> living surfacing amid efforts to manage emerging viruses. In a second
>> project, Gloria examines discourses of the microbiome bridging insight from
>> critical data studies, social theory, affect, security studies, material
>> culture, and the anthropocene.
>>
>> Cengiz Salman (he/him) is a PhD candidate in the Department of American
>> Culture (Digital Studies) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His
>> dissertation research broadly focuses on the relationship between digital
>> media, algorithms, unemployment, and racial capitalism. He holds a
>> Master of Arts degree in Social Science from the University of Chicago
>> (2013), and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology with a specialization
>> in Muslim Studies from Michigan State University (2011). Salman is a
>> recipient of a Fulbright IIE Award, which he used to conduct research on
>> urban transformation projects in Turkey from 2011-2012.
>>
>> Paul Vanouse is an artist and professor of Art at the University at
>> Buffalo, NY, where he is the founding director of the Coalesce Center for
>> Biological Art. Interdisciplinarity and impassioned amateurism guide his
>> (bio-media) art practice, which uses molecular biology techniques to
>> challenge “genome hype” and to explore critical issues surrounding
>> contemporary biotechnologies. Vanouse’s projects have been funded by
>> Rockefeller Foundation, Creative Capital Foundation, National Endowment for
>> the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the
>> Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Sun Microsystems, and the National
>> Science Foundation. His bio-media and interactive cinema projects have been
>> exhibited in over 25 countries and widely across the US. His scent-based
>> bioartwork, Labor, was awarded a Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica, 2019.
>> He has an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University.
>>
>>
>> Elizabeth Wijaya is Assistant Professor of East Asian Cinema in the
>> Department of Visual Studies and Cinema Studies Institute at the University
>> of Toronto. She is co-founder of the Singapore-based film production
>> company, E&W Films. She is working on her book manuscript on the visible
>> and invisible worlds of trans-Chinese cinema.
>>
>> Renate Ferro
>> Visiting Associate Professor
>> Director of Undergraduate Studies
>> Department of Art
>> Tjaden Hall 306
>> rfe...@cornell.edu
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
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