Finally, the congress ended. It has been such an interesting weekend, where I could learn much about all the lecturers, know researches and collect a lot of information. I want to thank particularlly to Mari-Luz Esteban for the feedback she gave me in order to spread our vision out about the anthropological studies of ebola.
Despite I promised I was going to upload the communication I presented at the 2nd Congres of Critical Social Psychology, finally I couldn't due to some technical problems (the battery ran out in the middle of the recording).
In order to offset this issue, I want to share an adapted version of my speech with all of you. You can see our Prezi slides here and read one abstract here, so let's start:
Hi everyone. As I am the moderator of this communication so I have to self-present. I am Enrique Baleriola, I am a PhD student in Social Pschology at this university (Autonomous University of Barcelona), led by the senior lecturer, Francisco Tirado.
I would be satisfied if you catch only one idea or concept I want to share today. This is a new shift we think have occured in relation with the traditional concept of body by Foucault. In order to do this, I want to present this index (see slides) where we will begin talking about of some elements that constitute the background of our research. In second place, we want to talk about this new concept of body, derived or displaced from the Foucaultian conception. After this, we want to mention briefly some aspects of the traditional conception of body and its management, called "biopolitics" or "biopower". And finally, I want to expose some empirical examples about this shift in order to understand it better.
Okey, so where are us? in this slide you can see what we refer as the background from where we take off: the "9-11 attacks", the recent episoded of ebola in Africa and Spain, Chernobyl, Neoliberalism as the previous researcher, Diego, has exposed... the Big Data analysis of massive data amounts, anthrax... well, this is our point of departure.
In second place, I want to present our proposal. The new body and its management. What is it? We have called it as the "interspecie body", and in which consists? well, as we can see in the first slide, we point out that body is no longer conceived as a clear-boundaries object, but a body that is all time in relation with other species, as this human-skin and mosquito shows. But it not only happens with the humans bodies and others animals, but also between animals: a flock of sheeps that are spread with a virus contained in a close flock of cows; a fruit bat that bites a monkey... we can see it later, but our results are pointing in this sense. As we can see, is an interrelated body: interspecie, an unfold body, open literally (in their tissues or organs), a body where the key is the movement of the outbreak (transported by this symbiosis between species), a collective body, mediated by the techné that Agamben told us. Thus, body is mediated by technologies. Life, split in bios and zoé, is becomed bios due to a technology. The "bare life" not exists because it is a bared life. Bared by some kind of technology.
Well, so how is managed and administrated this new body? through new practices that are distinct from the classical conception of biopolitics by Foucault. We have named it as "kinepolitics" (from the greek root, kiné) because we think this new body is managed in its movement. The best example is a plane. Where people is controlled (i.e his or her fever by a heat gun) before entry to one foreign country. But as I have said, there are a lot of examples.
About the classical body in Foucault, I don't want to say so much because we don't have much time. Only some key concept: the shift from let-live/make-die to make-live/let-die in the modern time; and we want also to highlight this "closed" body, institutionalized (molded in instutitions), fold, with some clear boundaries.
Okey, we can discuss it in the questions section or at the coffee break. Let's go to the last part: some examples of this new body.
(See slides) well, the first interesting thing in this maps are the arrows. Movement is administrated because there are a (bio)risk that begins in Africa and goes to USA and Asia. We can see this arrows also in the zoonotic course of an infection. The deer is infected by a fruit bat, and the first one then, is eaten by a monkey that is in conctact with humans. So, what we can do? stablish controls in these movements as we will see now. Finally, before arrive to the documents, we can see another feature of this body. As I said, this body is literally open, showing tissues and organs, and always related with a map, a territory (regadless of what we understand by territory).
In the last place, we can read some extracts about the interspecie-body (I want to use the english documents only):
"Ebola outbreaks among humans have been associated with direct exposure to fruit bats and mortality among other wild animals, which tend to succumb to the infection. "
"Preventing infection in communities:
Visitors and residents in EVD-affected areas face a low risk of becoming infected in the community if the following precautions are strictly followed:
• Avoid contact with symptomatic patients and their bodily fluids.
• Avoid contact with corpses and/or bodily fluids from deceased patients.
•Avoid contact with wild animals (including primates, monkeys, forest antelopes, rodents and bats), both alive and dead, and consumption of bushmeat.
• Wash hands regularly, using soap or antiseptics. "
Well, as we can see, the key concept is about avoid the contact, that is, to interrupt the interspecie-body. In all the cases, there is a symbiotic process where two kind of species or animals are in contact. For instance, in the second document, we can see some forms of try to manage this new body (we can consider it within the kinepolitics): avoid contact with sumptomatic patients, avoid contact with wild animals (without any control in their movement), wash hands, etc.
That's all, thank you so much. We can discuss it when all the researches would talk.
Photo Credit: Flickr, user Christian Senger
