The Prophetic Faculty of Epidemic Photography: Chinese Wet Markets and the Imagination of the Next Pandemic

Lynteris, Christos

doi:10.1080/08949468.2016.1131484

Cited by 38 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…8 Questions regarding the importance of invisibility or the 'unseen' have recently been developed by Shawn Michelle Smith (2013) and I have applied them elsewhere to the field of epidemic photography (Lynteris 2016a). These works have argued that the visibly or apparently unseen is a key field in the articulation of the visible.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mirroring the principal function of what I have elsewhere addressed as instances of prophetic photography (Lynteris 2016a) -the ability to foresee a spillover event, and yet to never say, or be seen as wanting for not saying, exactly how or when this will occurthe CDC Ebola diagrams portray human-animal relations as entailing, at one and the same time, a peril for local communities and a universal existential risk. For within the current paradigm of pandemic preparedness (Lakoff 2008), any local outbreak of an emerging infectious disease, such as Ebola, is seen as the first step or herald of the 'next pandemic'; an event of human-extinction proportions (Caduff 2015;Keck 2010;King 2004).…”

Section: Journal Of Thementioning

confidence: 99%

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Zoonotic diagrams: mastering and unsettling human‐animal relations

Lynteris

2017

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article approaches interspecies relations through an examination of the prevalent visual device employed in the representation of animal-human infection in the life sciences: the zoonotic cycles diagram. After charting its emergence and development in the context of bubonic plague, I explore how this diagrammatic regime has been applied in two distinct practical contexts: a plague warning sign on the Grand Canyon National Park hiking trail; and the on-line public information campaign launched by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the wake of the Ebola outbreak of 2014-16. The article demonstrates the principal ontological and biopolitical operations of these diagrams, arguing that, far from simply summarizing epidemiological narratives of animal-human infection, they function both as pilots of human mastery over human-animal relations and as crucial sites of unsettlement for the latter.Diagrams form one of the most persistent and pervasive tools of anthropological thinking. From Alfred Kroeber's 'tree of cultural evolution' to rendering house and village plans into analytical charts of social life, and from kinship diagrams to the complex diagrammatic analytics developed by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Alfred Gell or, more recently, in the context of ontological debates, there is hardly a key moment or turn in the discipline which is not accompanied or supported by what we may call diagrammatic pilots of anthropological reasoning. And yet, with few notable, and mostly kinship-focused, exceptions (Banks 2001;Bouquet 1996;Grimshaw 2001;Hage & Harary 1983), anthropologists appear largely uninterested in the way in which diagrams have influenced the development of ideas and debates in our discipline. Given the latter's record of reflexivity, this cannot be said to be the result of a lack of self-inspection. Rather, it seems to stem from an invisibility of the diagram as a unique mode of drawing out forms, patterns, and relations across epistemic fields and cultures. Hence diagrams constitute a blind spot for anthropology not only as regards its own practices but also as an ethnographic object.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Journal Of Thementioning

confidence: 99%

Zoonotic diagrams: mastering and unsettling human‐animal relations

Lynteris

2017

Royal Anthropological Inst

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“…This is at one and the same time a spatial and temporal configuration of emergence as a process unfolding at the margins of modern civilisation. As several authors have stressed, the self-presentation of 'virus-hunters' like Nathan Wolfe as jungle warriors and the systematic problematisation of bush meat practices in Africa and 'wet markets' in East Asia have contributed to a radical 'othering' of emergence (Keck 2015;Lachenal 2015;Lynteris 2016c;Mason 2010;Zhan 2005). In Priscilla Wald's (2008, 7-8) words, 'primitive farms .…”

Section: Webs Of Causalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, besides scientific narratives, the mythic dimension of animal sources of disease today is also evident in popular representations of zoonosis. Either in the form of epidemic photography, focusing as it does on wet markets and bush meat consumption (Lynteris 2016c), or in blockbuster epidemic apocalypse films like 28 Days Later (Boyle 2002) and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Wyatt 2011), where the killer virus jumps species so as to eradicate humanity, the mythic 'animal zero', wherein the pandemic-to-be is lurking, has achieved a global spectatorship (Lynteris 2016a). For all its discourse of entanglement and interspecies enmeshment then, portraying animals as incubators, carriers, reservoirs, or spreaders of human infection, and ultimately a human extinction event, grounds the scientific study of zoonosis on a hard anthropocentric ground.…”

Section: Webs Of Causalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Zoonosis

Keck¹,

Lynteris²

2018

MAT

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In recent years anthropologists have shown an increasing interest in 'zoonoses': diseases naturally transmitted from nonhuman animals to humans, such as anthrax, brucellosis, influenza, hantavirus syndromes, Middle East respiratory syndrome, plague, and rabies. Animal-derived epidemic crises such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) (1996), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) (2003), swine flu (2009), and Ebola (2014) outbreaks have further fuelled research and debate around this type of infectious disease. In this flourishing ethnographic trajectory, zoonotic diseases and outbreaks have been approached by a wide array of analytical perspectives. Positioned and enriched by concurrent developments in biosecurity studies, critical animal studies, and debates around the notion of the Anthropocene, anthropological research has focused on discourses and practices relating to human-animal relations as sites of medical, epidemiological and public health problematisation, intervention, and contestation. Breaking new ground in this research trail, this special issue aims to foster anthropological debate by focusing on the animal-human link that forms the aetiological site of zoonotic infection. The articles in this issue provide robust ethnographic and historicalanthropological studies of human-animal relations, as both revealed and transformed by the medical focus on zoonosis. We thus aim to bring medical anthropology together with animal studies in ways that highlight the contribution of anthropology to interdisciplinary research on zoonoses and the impact of this research on contemporary practices of global health.

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“…The epidemiological narrative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus traces its emergence to a single imagined bat, which contaminated another mammal, before the virus made the "spillover" to humans (Lynteris 2016). While virus hunting is certainly taking place in the environs of Wuhan, China, it is not taking place everywhere in the world that the virus has spread.…”

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confidence: 99%

How Do We See COVID-19? Visual Iconographies of Racial Contagion

Ostherr¹

2020

American Literature

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Contagion media have historically performed the dual functions of scientific and ideological persuasion, often deploying an iconography of racial contagion that combines these two functions. In efforts to halt the spread of the virus, health, science, and media organizations create visual imagery to teach the public to imagine we can see and therefore avoid contaminants that are invisible to the naked eye. Comparison of COVID-19 with other global disease outbreaks shows how a core set of contagion media visualizations are repeatedly deployed with subtle adaptations for unique diseases and display interfaces. The variations among different corpora of contagion media point to the interplay among persistent, transhistorical tropes, particular sites of meaning production, and novel technical affordances. This article will examine a subset of these representational techniques, including microscopic images of the virus, close-ups of disease vectors, global and local maps of contagion, health workers in biohazard suits, and visibly ill patients. The essay argues that techniques for visualizing the invisible produce a narrative logic of causality in COVID-19 that reinforces racist and xenophobic discourses of containment and control with direct and deadly consequences. Mitigation of this pandemic and future pandemics will require not only medical but also representational interventions.

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The Prophetic Faculty of Epidemic Photography: Chinese Wet Markets and the Imagination of the Next Pandemic

Cited by 38 publications

References 24 publications

Zoonotic diagrams: mastering and unsettling human‐animal relations

Zoonotic diagrams: mastering and unsettling human‐animal relations

Zoonosis

How Do We See COVID-19? Visual Iconographies of Racial Contagion

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