Abstract
While coronavirus infections are unwanted, they are unavoidable. As campaigns to ‘eradicate’ viruses fail, there is an opportunity to consider the conditions that support stable coexistence or symbiogenesis. It is time to move beyond a viral politics that is tied to warfare, where the enemy is the other with whom there is the ever-present possibility of a violent struggle to the death. Viruses are all around us and viral remnants make up significant parts of the human genome, but most of these infectious agents do not cause serious disease. Symbiosis literally means ‘living together,’ and symbiotic partners can have good, bad, or pluripotent effects on hosts. As the world passes a grim milestone, with more than 5 million people dead from COVID-19, it is important to better understand viral vulnerability. We should distinguish the viral agent driving the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, from the serious disease, COVID-19. Many people who are infected with the virus are asymptomatic and never become sick. Medical innovations—vaccines, tests, and new treatments—should reduce collective fear of disease and death. But, the distribution of these life-saving technologies is reinforcing medical inequality. As some live in peace with SARS-CoV-2, many others still fear disease and death.
Keywords
- Coexistence
- Symbiogenesis
- Virology
- viral species
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Buying options
References
Andersen, Kristian G., W. Andrew Rambaut, Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes, and Robert F. Garry. 2020. The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nature Medicine 26: 450–452. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0820-9.
Balakrishnan, Gopal, and Carl Schmitt. 2000. The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt. New York: Verso.
Barr, Jeremy J. 2017. A Bacteriophages Journey through the Human Body. Immunological Reviews 279 (1): 106–122. https://doi.org/10.1111/imr.12565.
Benjamin, Walter. 1968. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books.
Bishop, Claire. 2004. Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics. October 110: 51–79.
Bourque, Guillaume, Kathleen H. Burns, Mary Gehring, Vera Gorbunova, Andrei Seluanov, Molly Hammell, Michaël Imbeault, Zsuzsanna Izsvák, Henry L. Levin, Todd S. Macfarlan, Dixie L. Mager, and Cédric Feschotte. 2018. Ten Things You Should Know about Transposable Elements. Genome Biology 19. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-018-1577-z.
Brives, Charlotte. 2021. Pluribiosis and the Never-Ending Microgeohistories. In With Microbes, ed. Charlotte Brives, Matthäus Rest, and Sariola, Salla. Manchester: Mattering Press. 10.28938/9781912729180
Brown, Peter J. 1987. Microparasites and Macroparasites. Cultural Anthropology 2 (1): 155–171.
Choy, Timothy, and Jerry Zee. 2015. Condition—Suspension. Cultural Anthropology 30 (22): 210–223. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca30.2.04.
Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fearnley, Lyle. 2020. Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China’s Pandemic Epicenter. Durham: Duke University Press.
Freshour, Carrie. 2020. Poultry and Prisons. Monthly Review, July 1. https://monthlyreview.org/2020/07/01/poultry-and-prisons/. Accessed 30 Nov 2021.
Gorbalenya, Alexander E. 2011. Could We Live in Peace with Viruses? Address, Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum (LUMC), June 20. https://www.lumc.nl/over-het-lumc/hoo/oraties-redes/2011/1105130430353257/. Accessed 30 Nov 2021.
Gorbalenya, Alexander E., Susan C. Baker, Ralph S. Baric, Raoul J. de Groot, Christian Drosten, Anastasia A. Gulyaeva, Bart L. Haagmans, et al. 2020a. The Species Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Related Coronavirus: Classifying 2019-NCoV and Naming It SARS-CoV-2. Nature Microbiology 5 (4): 536–544. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-020-0695-z.
Gorbalenya, Alexander E., Susan C. Baker, Ralph S. Baric, Raoul J. de Groot, Christian Drosten, Anastasia A. Gulyaeva, Bart L. Haagmans, et al. 2020b. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Related Coronavirus: The Species and Its Viruses—A Statement of the Coronavirus Study Group. bioRxiv, February 11. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.07.937862.
Greenhough, Beth. 2012. Where Species Meet and Mingle: Endemic Human-Virus Relations, Embodied Communication and More-than-Human Agency at the Common Cold Unit 1946–90. Cultural Geographies 19 (3): 281–301. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474011422029.
Groff, Destin, Ashley Sun, Anna E. Ssentongo, Djibril M. Ba, Nicholas Parsons, Govinda R. Poudel, Alain Lekoubou, John S. Oh, Jessica E. Ericson, Paddy Ssentongo, and Vernon M. Chinchilli. 2021. Short-Term and Long-Term Rates of Postacute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection: A Systematic Review. JAMA Network Open 4: 10. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.28568.
Haraway, Donna. 1992. The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others. In Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler, 296–337. New York: Routledge.
———. 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hatch, Anthony Ryan. 2016. Blood Sugar: Racial Pharmacology and Food Justice in Black America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
———. 2020. Two Meditations in Coronatime. The Science, Knowledge, and Technology (SKAT) Section of the American Sociological Association, May 22. https://asaskat.com/2020/05/22/two-meditations-in-coronatime/. Accessed 30 Nov 2021.
Hinchliffe, Steve. 2021. Postcolonial Global Health, Post-Colony Microbes and Antimicrobial Resistance. Theory, Culture & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420981606.
International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium. 2001. Initial Sequencing and Analysis of the Human Genome. Nature 409 (6822): 860–921. https://doi.org/10.1038/35057062.
Keck, Frédéric. 2020. Reservoirs: Virus Hunters and Birdwatchers in Chinese Sentinel Posts. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kirksey, Eben. 2012. Living with Parasites in Palo Verde National Park. Environmental Humanities 1 (1): 23–55. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3609958.
———. 2020. The Emergence of COVID-19: A Multispecies Story. Anthropology Now 12 (1): 11–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2020.1760631.
———. 2021. Genealogy, Virality, and Potentiality: Moving Beyond Orientalism with COVID-19. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 18 (3): 383–387. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-021-10121-3.
Kirksey, Eben, and F Lyle. 2021. The War Against Covid Is Over—If We Want It to Be. The Guardian, September 22.
Kowallik, Klaus V., and William F. Martin. 2021. The Origin of Symbiogenesis: An Annotated English Translation of Mereschkowsky’s 1910 Paper on the Theory of Two Plasma Lineages. Biosystems 199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystems.2020.104281.
Lacan, Jacques. 1993. The Psychoses. Trans. Russell Grigg. New York: W.W. Norton.
Lowe, Celia. 2010. Viral Clouds: Becoming H5n1 in Indonesia. Cultural Anthropology 25 (4): 625–649. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2010.01072.x.
Lynteris, Christos. 2019. Introduction: Infectious Animals and Epidemic Blame. In Framing Animals as Epidemic Villains: Histories of Non-Human Disease Vectors, ed. Christos Lynteris, 1–25. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26795-7_1.
Mereschkowski, Konstantin. 1910. Theorie Der Zwei Plasmaarten Als Grundlage Der Symbiogenesis, Einer Neuen Lehre von Der Entstehung Der Organismen. Biologisches Centralblatt 30: 289–303.
Mol, Annemarie. 2002. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Science and Cultural Theory. Durham: Duke University Press. Kindle.
Nelson, Alondra. 2016. The Longue Durée of Black Lives Matter. American Journal of Public Health 106 (10): 1734–1737. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303422.
Nishihara, Hidenori. 2019. Retrotransposons Spread Potential Cis-Regulatory Elements during Mammary Gland Evolution. Nucleic Acids Research 47 (22): 11551–11562. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkz1003.
———. 2020. Transposable Elements as Genetic Accelerators of Evolution: Contribution to Genome Size, Gene Regulatory Network Rewiring and Morphological Innovation. Genes & Genetic Systems 94 (6): 269–281. https://doi.org/10.1266/ggs.19-00029.
Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2016. Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Rotman, Brian. 2008. Becoming Beside Ourselves: The Alphabet, Ghosts, and Distributed Human Being. Durham: Duke University Press.
Sariola, Salla. 2021. Necropolitics of Vaccine Capitalism. Visualizing the Virus. https://visualizingthevirus.com/entry/necropolitics-of-vaccine-capitalism/. Accessed 30 Nov 2021.
Senft, Anna D., and Todd S. Macfarlan. 2021. Transposable Elements Shape the Evolution of Mammalian Development. Nature Reviews Genetics 22 (11): 691–711. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-021-00385-1.
Serres, Michel. 2007. The Parasite. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Stengers, Isabelle. 2005. The Cosmopolitical Proposal. In Making Things Public, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, 994–1003. Cambridge: MIT Press.
———. 2010. Cosmopolitics I. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Wald, Priscilla. 2008. Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative. Durham: Duke University Press.
Xiao, Xiao, Chris Newman, Christina D. Buesching, David W. Macdonald, and Zhao-Min Zhou. 2021. Animal Sales from Wuhan Wet Markets Immediately Prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Scientific Reports 11: 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-91470-2.
Yek, Christina. 2022. Risk Factors for Severe COVID-19 Outcomes Among Persons Aged ≥18 Years Who Completed a Primary COVID-19 Vaccination Series—465 Health Care Facilities, United States, December 2020–October 2021. MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 71. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7101a4.
Youle, Merry. 2017. Thinking Like a Phage: The Genius of the Viruses That Infect Bacteria and Archaea. San Diego: Wholon. Kindle.
Zimmer, Carl. 2010. Hunting Fossil Viruses in Human DNA. The New York Times, January 11.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kirksey, E. (2022). Living in Peace with Coronaviruses. In: Lemm, V., Vatter, M. (eds) The Viral Politics of Covid-19. Biolegalities. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3942-6_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3942-6_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-19-3941-9
Online ISBN: 978-981-19-3942-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)