Epidemic as a More-than-Human Performance
Abstract
Taking a cue from the anthropause (Rutz et al., 2020), which accompanied the current pandemic of COVID-19, the article posits a new approach to an epidemic as a more-than-human performance. The performance is an action resulting from an entanglement of human and more-than-human agencies, producing effects across
socio-political, economic, and cultural contexts. The approach is an alternative to the dominant epidemic narratives, which view epidemics as phenomena of human public health, neglecting more-than-human agencies in their emergence and prevention. While analyzing chosen (re)presentations of an epidemic in popular culture, the article focuses on three aspects of an epidemic as a more-than-human performance. It scrutinizes the new model of sociality it posits, problematizes hitherto accepted ways of thinking about
human and nonhuman bodies, and projects forms of more-than-human cooperation to manage epidemics.
Keywords
epidemic; science fiction; more-than-human socialities; anthropause; Anthropocene
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Jagiellonian University Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6490-2340
Mateusz Chaberski is assistant professor in the Department for Performativity Studies of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. In 2016 he won a Foundation for Polish Science scholarship for innovative research in Humanities. His academic interests range from performativity theory, affect, and assemblage theories to Anthropocene studies. In 2015, he published Doświadczenie (syn)estetyczne. Performatywne aspekty przedstawień ((Syn)aesthetic Experience: Performative Aspects of Site-Specific Performance) and in 2019 Asamblaże, Asamblaże. Doświadczenie w zamglonym antropocenie (Assemblages, Assemblages: Experience in the Foggy Anthropocene). Together with Mateusz Borowski and Małgorzata Sugiera, he edited Emerging Affinities: Possible Futures of Performative Arts (Transcript Verlag 2019) and with Ewa Bal Situated Knowing: Epistemic Perspectives on Performance (Routledge 2020).
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