Review Essay: Addressing the Epidemic of Epidemics: Germs, Security, and a Call for Biocriticism

Global health wars: a rhetorical review of global health critique

“…Where ostensibly normal global health scholars tried to sound the alarm about the threat of infectious disease outbreaks, humanities scholars critiqued the practice. This was the rise of the ‘outbreak narrative’ (Wald 2008), an ‘epidemic of signification’ (Kenworthy, Thomann, and Parker 2018; Treichler 1987, 1999), and an ‘epidemic of epidemics’ (Finnegan and Keränen 2011, 226)—all conditions wherein discourse has become ‘infected with virus metaphors’ (Schell 1997, 93). According to Keränen, agencies of governance had been ‘concocting viral apocalypse’ in what was a ‘biodefense bonanza’ (Keränen 2011, 466).…”

“…According to Keränen, agencies of governance had been ‘concocting viral apocalypse’ in what was a ‘biodefense bonanza’ (Keränen 2011, 466). When infectious disease was addressed as a matter of national security, scholars took issue with the ‘medicalisation of insecurity’ (Finnegan and Keränen 2011; Elbe 2010) and interrogated the newly constructed problem of ‘unpreparedness’ (Lakoff 2007; Lakoff 2008, 136). GHH critics made an interdiscipline of this tack, terming their scholarship concerning ‘biosecurity’ (Collier, Lakoff, and Rabinow 2004; Lakoff 2008) ‘biocriticism’ (Finnegan and Keränen 2011) and initiating a movement towards a ‘critical, self-reflexive knowledge of biosecurity’ (Lakoff 2008, 21).…”

“…When infectious disease was addressed as a matter of national security, scholars took issue with the ‘medicalisation of insecurity’ (Finnegan and Keränen 2011; Elbe 2010) and interrogated the newly constructed problem of ‘unpreparedness’ (Lakoff 2007; Lakoff 2008, 136). GHH critics made an interdiscipline of this tack, terming their scholarship concerning ‘biosecurity’ (Collier, Lakoff, and Rabinow 2004; Lakoff 2008) ‘biocriticism’ (Finnegan and Keränen 2011) and initiating a movement towards a ‘critical, self-reflexive knowledge of biosecurity’ (Lakoff 2008, 21). Critics united as ‘second-order’ analysts of biosecurity who could use their critical distance to ‘plan, interpret, decipher, decode, analyse, synthesise, diagnose, contest, approve, improve, convince, decry, denounce and raise holy hell’ (Rabinow 2015, 283).…”