Book Launch
The Viral Politics of COVID19: Nature, Home and Planetary Health (Plagrave Macmillan, Biolegalities Series, September 2022), co-edited by Vanessa Lemm and Miguel Vatter.
Event Details
11:00am-12:30pm, Friday 4 November, 2022
School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, 61 Banbury Road, Oxford University
Hosted by Eben Kirksey. With Speakers: Vanessa Lemm (in person), Frédéric Keck (virtual), Lyle Fearnley (virtual), Miguel Vatter (virtual)
Lyle Fearnley is Associate Professor (Anthropology) in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Cluster at Singapore University of Technology and Design. He is the author of Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China's Pandemic Epicenter (Duke, 2020).
Frédéric Keck is a Senior Researcher at the Laboratory of Social Anthropology (CNRS-Collège de France-EHESS). He is author of Avian Reservoirs. Virus Hunters and Birdwatchers in Chinese Sentinel Posts (Duke University Press, 2020) and (with A. Kelly and C. Lynteris) Anthropology of Epidemics (Routledge, 2019).
Vanessa Lemm is a Research Fellow at “Body, Language and Politics” research group at the Complutense University of Madrid. She is currently a Fellow of the Weimar Klassik Stiftung. She recently published Homo Natura: Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophical Anthropology and Biopolitics (EUP, 2021). Her research areas include contemporary continental philosophy, biopolitics and environmental humanities.
Miguel Vatter is Professor of Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Globalization and Citizenship, Deakin University. His latest books include Divine Democracy: Political Theology after Carl Schmitt (Oxford, 2021) and Living Law: Jewish Political Theology from Hermann Cohen to Hannah Arendt (Oxford, 2021). His areas of research are political theology, biopolitics and republicanism.
About the Book
The book critically examines the COVID-19 pandemic and its legal and biological governance using a multidisciplinary approach. The perspectives reflected in this volume investigate the imbrications between technosphere and biosphere at social, economic, and political levels. The biolegal dimensions of our evolving understanding of “home” are analysed as the common thread linking the problem of zoonotic diseases and planetary health with that of geopolitics, biosecurity, bioeconomics and biophilosophies of the plant-animal-human interface. In doing so, the contributions collectively highlight the complexities, challenges, and opportunities for humanity, opening new perspectives on how to inhabit our shared planet.
The book offers cutting-edge contributions from an international team of established and emerging scholars and brings a unique approach intersecting the fields of anthropology, cultural and media studies, history, philosophy, politics and public health, sociology and science and technology studies.
Contributors include Mark Andrejevic and Zala Volcic (Melbourne), Yasmeen Arif (Delhi), Azita Chellappoo (London), Susan Craddock (Minneapolis), Lyle Fearnley (Singapore), Gay Hawkins (Sydney), Frédéric Keck (Paris), Eben Kirksey (Oxford), Martijn Konings (Sydney), Frederico Luisetti (St. Gallen), Maurizio Meloni (Melbourne), Stephen Muecke (Adelaide), Abigail Nieves Delgado (Utrecht), Miguel Vatter (Melbourne), Vanessa Lemm (Melbourne).
About the Editors
Miguel Vatter is Professor of Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Globalization and Citizenship, Deakin University. His latest books include Divine Democracy: Political Theology after Carl Schmitt (Oxford, 2021) and Living Law: Jewish Political Theology from Hermann Cohen to Hannah Arendt (Oxford, 2021). His areas of research are political theology, biopolitics and republicanism.
Vanessa Lemm is a Research Fellow at “Body, Language and Politics” research group at the Complutense University of Madrid. She recently published Homo Natura: Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophical Anthropology and Biopolitics (EUP, 2021). Her research areas include contemporary continental philosophy, biopolitics and environmental humanities.
