Giraud, E.H. (2021) After the “Age of Wreckers and Exterminators?”. Cultural Politics, 17 (1). pp. 37-47. ISSN 1743-2197
Abstract
This essay delineates the material and conceptual limitations of two prominent ways of figuring the relationship between humans and harmful beings: narratives of eradication and entanglement. Ecological concern about the legacies of twentieth-century attempts to eradicate life deemed dangerous to humans (such as the damage fostered by DDT and the overuse of antibiotics), coupled with declines in the efficacy of some major medical and chemical techniques for eradicating harmful beings, means that exterminism is increasingly seen as both ethically undesirable and materially impossible. At the same time, it is insufficient to fall back on narratives about the ontological inevitability of entanglement with nonhumans because the harms—for humans and other species—that are posed by particular relations are tightly bound with socioeconomic inequalities and asymmetries in power. Through situating contemporary viral relations in relation to existing literatures focused on pests and parasites, the essay argues that harmful beings are not just exceptions that can be worked around and ultimately accommodated within relational ethics. Instead, harmful entanglements offer more fundamental provocations, forcing attention to the question of how to create more livable worlds through situated acts of distancing without descending back into narratives of eradication.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 Duke University Press. This is an author-produced version of a paper subsequently published in Cultural Politics. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | entanglement; eradication; animals; new materialism; insects; microbes; viruses; anthropocentrism |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Sociological Studies (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 27 Jul 2021 08:15 |
Last Modified: | 27 Jul 2021 08:15 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Duke University Press |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1215/17432197-8797501 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:176535 |