Abundance in the Anthropocene

Abstract

Numerous attempts have been made to understand the Anthropocene in relation to overwhelming species and habitat loss. However, amidst these losses ecological niches have emerged and been taken as signs of resilience and hope: from mushrooms that flourish in damaged forests to urban wildlife in brownfield sites. This article offers an alternative conception of abundance, which addresses the sociological and conceptual challenges posed when abundance is a characteristic of so-called pests, parasites and pathogens. The article draws together research from three case studies: bed bugs, hookworms and antibiotic resistant microbes, all of which have become intimately entangled with particular human communities as other lifeforms have declined. Through contrasting these cases we elucidate how the affordances of abundant lifeforms, including the dangers they pose to other forms of life, are entwined with failed ‘technofixes’, colonial legacies and contemporary inequalities. In doing so we situate abundance as a constitutive element of the Anthropocene that requires as sustained an ethical engagement as questions of species loss. We conclude by arguing that further ethical attention needs to be paid to finding ways of ‘being alongside’ life that is difficult to live with, but is becoming intimately re-entangled with human worlds. In doing so, we complicate existing theoretical work that has drawn hope from multispecies abundance and entanglement.

Fearful Intimacies

“…Between the ying of bad germs and the yang of good germs, it is necessary to fi nd alternative ways of talking about and enacting home hygiene in general and COVID-19 in particular if we want to fi nd ways of safely 'being alongside' (Latimer 2013) bacteria and viruses rather than waging war on them. This also entails scrutinising how capacities to do so are shaped by historical and contemporary inequalities (Giraud et al 2019).…”

“…Scholars interested in 'microbe studies' have highlighted the complexity of and multiplicity in the ways that human-microbe relations manifest themselves and have recognised the challenges faced by social scientists and humanities scholars in engaging with these complexities (see Greenhough et al 2020). From killing to caring, microbes have troubled many categories that seemed to have been clearly delineated in the past, and they have transgressed boundaries between diff erent species (Giraud et al 2019;Helmreich 2016;Koteyko et al 2008;. A few studies have focussed on viruses specifi cally (e.g.…”

After the “Age of Wreckers and Exterminators?”

“…Initiatives underpinned by an ethics of eliminating particular life-forms included the widespread use of DDT (Kinkela's own focus), which was itself part of a wider "domestication" of gases used during the First World War for peacetime use (Feigenbaum 2017), wherein "bed bugs, flour moths, ticks, and above all cloth lice" became the new targets of chemical interventions that attacked "not the body of the enemy, but his environment" (Sloterdjik 2009: 43). 1 Attempts to make human environments inhospitable to other beings, moreover, were not simply reflected in overtly violent interventions, but in commonplace medical technologies: most notably antibiotics, antiseptics, and treatments to kill parasites (Giraud et al 2019). In the previous century, in other words, the problem of how to deal with harmful life was often resolved through creating distance between these beings and (certain) humans.…”

“…In the wake of what has sometimes been an over-exuberant valorization of relational ethics (Colebrook 2014), a number of thinkers have delineated cases that elucidate the challenge of "flourishing with awkward creatures" (Ginn, Beisel, and Barua 2014): such as slugs (Ginn 2014), mosquitoes (Beisel 2010(Beisel , 2015, and "uncharismatic" invasive species (Clark 2015), as well as bed bugs, antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, and hookworms (Giraud et al 2019). Ginn (2014: 540) puts it, bring into relief the limits of "the vitalist emphasis on gathering together and relationality" in accommodating "anything that might question the desirability of being attached.…”

Estranged companions: Bed bugs, biologies, and affective histories

“…A companion species perspective thus has clear ethical implications, drawing attention to the ways in which human agency is contingent on the relationships between humans and a myriad of other actors. This emphasis upon relationality marks a move designed to both unsettle human exceptionalism and underline human obligations towards more-than-human worlds (Alaimo, 2016; Giraud et al, 2019; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017).…”