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Introduction: The molecular vision of life, medical countermeasures and (in)security -- Contingency, insecurity and the visualisation of life at the molecular level -- Preparedness and governmental support for medical countermeasure development -- Constant biological dynamics, immunology and magic bullets -- Process biology and medical countermeasures to combat viral and bacterial threats -- Conclusion: Rendering the future disease threat constant, manipulable and governable.

Reiner Schürmann's thinking is, as he himself would say, "riveted to a monstrous site." It remains focused on and situated between natality and mortality, the ultimate traits that condition human life. This book traces the contours of Schürmann's thinking in his magnum opus Broken Hegemonies in order to uncover the possibility of a politics that resists the hegemonic tendency to posit principles that set the world and our relationships with one another into violent order. The book follows in the footsteps of Oedipus who, in abject recognition of his finitude, stumbles upon the possibility of another politics with the help of his daughters at Colonus. The path toward this other, collaboratively created and thus poetic politics begins with an encounter with Aristotle, a thinker whom Schürmann most frequently read as the founder of hegemonic metaphysics, but whose thinking reveals itself as alive to beginnings in ways that open new possibility for human community. This return to beginnings leads, in turn, to Plotinus, who Schürmann reads as marking the destitution of the ancient hegemony of the Parmenidean principle of the One. By bringing Schürmann's innovative and compelling reading of René Char's poem, The Shark and the Gull, into dialogue with Plotinus we come to encounter the power of symbols to transform reality and open us to new constellations of possible community. In Plotinus, where we expected to encounter an end, we experience a new way of thinking natality in terms of what comes to language in Char as the nuptial. Having thus been awakened to the power of symbols, we are prepared to experience how in Kant being itself comes to expression as plurivocal in a way that reveals just how pathologically delusional it is to attempt to deploy univocal principles in a plurivocal world. This opens us to what Schürmann calls the "singularization to come," a formulation that gestures to a mode of comportment at home in the ravaged site between natality and mortality. This then returns us to Oedipus at Colonus; but not to him alone. Rather, it points to the relationship that emerges for a time between Antigone, Ismene, and Oedipus, as they navigate a way between their exile from Thebes and Oedipus's final resting place near Athens. Here, having been awakened to the power of a poetic politics, we attend to three symbolic moments of touching between Oedipus and his daughters through which we might discern something of the new possibilities a poetic politics opens for us if we settle into the ravaged site that conditions our existence, together

AbstractFollowing its exceptional response to the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) gained new powers to securitise infectious disease outbreaks via the revised 2005 International Health Regulations (IHRs) and the ability to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). This article investigates the declaration of a PHEIC in relation to the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, the 2014–16 Ebola outbreak, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It argues that the securitisation of these outbreaks was dependent upon global surveillance networks that utilised genetic technologies to visualise the molecular characteristics and spread of the pathogen in question. Genetic evidence in these cases facilitated the creation of a securitised object by revealing the unique and 'untypable' nature of the H1N1 and SARS-CoV-2 viruses and made visible the widespread prevalence of Ebola across the population of West Africa. The power of this evidence draws from a societal perception of science as producing objective 'facts' about the world that objectivise their objects of concern and empower political actors in the implementation of their security agendas. As a result, scientific evidence provided by genetic technologies now plays a necessary and indispensable role in the securitisation of infectious disease outbreaks.

Understandings of the nature or inherent workings of molecular life in the field of biopolitical security studies have today been characterized predominantly in terms of contingency. This article challenges this characterization. It does so by identifying a particular logic of operation that organizes political action and intervention at both the level of the population and the molecular in response to the threats of smallpox, Ebola and pandemic influenza. It argues that, in fact, rather than securing by instantiating a general economy of the contingent, governing practices rely upon the characterization of the nature of molecular life in terms of its constant biological dynamics. Governments around the world, and the US government in particular, have reacted to the increased likelihood of the emergence of disease through the stockpiling of new pharmaceuticals, including the antivirals ST-246, ZMapp and Tamiflu. Antivirals represent a pharmaceutical tool stockpiled by governments to ensure that they can respond to the emergence of novel biological threats. The characterization of the nature of molecular life in terms of its constant biological dynamics is so important, then, as it is this that underpins political programmes of preparedness that utilize antivirals in the prevention of disease.

Understandings of the nature or inherent workings of molecular life in the field of biopolitical security studies have today been characterized predominantly in terms of contingency. This article challenges this characterization. It does so by identifying a particular logic of operation that organizes political action and intervention at both the level of the population and the molecular in response to the threats of smallpox, Ebola and pandemic influenza. It argues that, in fact, rather than securing by instantiating a general economy of the contingent (Dillon and Lobo-Guerrero, 2008: 284), governing practices rely upon the characterization of the nature of molecular life in terms of its constant biological dynamics. Governments around the world, and the US government in particular, have reacted to the increased likelihood of the emergence of disease through the stockpiling of new pharmaceuticals, including the antivirals ST-246, ZMapp and Tamiflu. Antivirals represent a pharmaceutical tool stockpiled by governments to ensure that they can respond to the emergence of novel biological threats. The characterization of the nature of molecular life in terms of its constant biological dynamics is so important, then, as it is this that underpins political programmes of preparedness that utilize antivirals in the prevention of disease.

A text in which 4 objects are described. An octopus, the Ghent Altarpiece, a quilted ball, the Handbook of Diseases of the Skin. And 4 quotations are presented. Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert S Macnamara, Slobodan Milosevic. Political leaders responsible for wars. Their descriptions of borders, distinstions, definitions. A book (Handbook of the Diseases of the Skin) which is described in the text and is integral to the work is in the library of KKH (the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm) ; 13 paintings presented in November2018 at Gallery Mejan

Reiner Schürmann's thinking is, as he himself would say, "riveted to a monstrous site." It remains focused on and situated between natality and mortality, the ultimate traits that condition human life. This book traces the contours of Schürmann's thinking in his magnum opus Broken Hegemonies in order to uncover the possibility of a politics that resists the hegemonic tendency to posit principles that set the world and our relationships with one another into violent order. The book follows in the footsteps of Oedipus who, in abject recognition of his finitude, stumbles upon the possibility of another politics with the help of his daughters at Colonus. The path toward this other, collaboratively created and thus poetic politics begins with an encounter with Aristotle, a thinker whom Schürmann most frequently read as the founder of hegemonic metaphysics, but whose thinking reveals itself as alive to beginnings in ways that open new possibility for human community. This return to beginnings leads, in turn, to Plotinus, who Schürmann reads as marking the destitution of the ancient hegemony of the Parmenidean principle of the One. By bringing Schürmann's innovative and compelling reading of René Char's poem, The Shark and the Gull, into dialogue with Plotinus we come to encounter the power of symbols to transform reality and open us to new constellations of possible community. In Plotinus, where we expected to encounter an end, we experience a new way of thinking natality in terms of what comes to language in Char as the nuptial. Having thus been awakened to the power of symbols, we are prepared to experience how in Kant being itself comes to expression as plurivocal in a way that reveals just how pathologically delusional it is to attempt to deploy univocal principles in a plurivocal world. This opens us to what Schürmann calls the "singularization to come," a formulation that gestures to a mode of comportment at home in the ravaged site between natality and mortality. This then returns us to Oedipus at Colonus; but not to him alone. Rather, it points to the relationship that emerges for a time between Antigone, Ismene, and Oedipus, as they navigate a way between their exile from Thebes and Oedipus's final resting place near Athens. Here, having been awakened to the power of a poetic politics, we attend to three symbolic moments of touching between Oedipus and his daughters through which we might discern something of the new possibilities a poetic politics opens for us if we settle into the ravaged site that conditions our existence, together.

AbstractPostmodern accounts of politeness are founded on the idea that theoretical 'second order' conceptualizations (e.g., politeness2) must be grounded in 'first order' interlocutor interpretations (e.g., politeness1). One consequence of this assumption is that the generalizability of

This essay articulates the differences and suggests the similarities between the practices of Socratic political speaking and those of Platonic political writing. The essay delineates Socratic speaking and Platonic writing as both erotically oriented toward ideals capable of transforming the lives of individuals and their relationships with one another. Besides it shows that in the Protagoras the practices of Socratic political speaking are concerned less with Protagoras than with the individual young man, Hippocrates. In the Phaedo, this ideal of a Socrates is amplified in such a way that Platonic writing itself emerges as capable of doing with readers what Socratic speaking did with those he encountered. Socrates is the Platonic political ideal. The result is a picture of the transformative political power of Socratic speaking and Platonic writing both.