Virocene Imaginaries: Some Critical Reflections

I observe ‘Anthropocene’s’ potentially recurring overlap with ‘the Virocene’. The Anthropocene is posited as a geological age or period commencing with the Industrial Revolution, during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Contrariwise with this historically incremental, if at times discontinuous or non-linear imaginary, the Virocene involves the episodic governing of human fortunes, sidelining again environmental concerns. Rather than thinking of the ‘Virocene’ as a self-contained period, we should consider it as an unpredictable rhizomatic phenomenon. Exposing the limitations of technology and science, the global onset of COVID-19 as a catastrophic évènement, suggested that Virocenic discharges enmesh and corrupt autonomous imaginaries of mobility (travel, social connectivity and global political solidarity). I focus on four distinctive ways to reconsider theories of mobility and globalisation (of risk): (a) thinking in terms of ‘events’ or ‘episodes’ of civilizational development or decline, not ‘ages’ (la longue durée) (b) tracking the ends Virocenic rhizomes, as these enable the uncontrolled growth of risks across and within borders, (c) focusing on cultures of control, rather than surveillance, to manage biomedical phenomena in democratic ways, and (d) being mindful of harmful reactivations of behaviours belonging to the global bureaucratic and colonial archives.