Hollin, G. and Giraud, E.H. (2022) Estranged companions : bed bugs, biologies, and affective histories. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 40 (1). pp. 80-98. ISSN 0263-7758
Abstract
In recent decades, bed bugs have swept across wealthy industrialized nations. After near extirpation in North America and Northern Europe, the return of these insects has led to a significant level of public anxiety and cultural notoriety. Here, we undertake an analysis of human-bed bug relations in order to both better understand this contemporary resurgence and critically examine the concept of “companion species.” We argue for conceiving of bed bugs as “estranged companions,” and foreground the need to understand contemporary encounters between humans and the insects through distinct histories that have been shaped by the opening and closing of spaces between classed and racialized bodies and that have been dependent upon the development and deployment of particular technologies such as Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT). Further, we argue that “estrangement” has wider conceptual purchase and contributes to a body of research that has countered a strain of scientism in theory that decenters “the human” by interrogating the relations between companion species, (bio)political interventions, and colonial histories. Estrangement contributes to this task by, first, foregrounding that relationships with all companion species are imbricated in situated histories and biopolitical regimes and, second, drawing attention to the differential ethico-political implications of these regimes.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Keywords: | companion species; estrangement; DDT; insects; more than human geography |
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: | 17 Sep 2021 08:00 |
Last Modified: | 15 Mar 2022 13:08 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/02637758211050936 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:178243 |