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SUMMARY:Pathological Lives: on the cosmopolitics of losing self-assurance 
 - Professor Steve Hinchliffe\, Geography and College of Life and Environme
 ntal Sciences\, University of Exeter
DTSTART:20170209T161500Z
DTEND:20170209T180000Z
UID:TALK67146@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:45781
DESCRIPTION:We live in resurgent microbial times.  From the ‘volatile wo
 rld of influenza viruses’ (WHO\, 2015) to the circulation of antimicrobi
 al genes across populations of bacteria\, this is a bio-insecure world.  I
 t is a world where the smallest of organisms threatens the edifices of mod
 ern life (medicine\, food production\, infrastructures\, mobility\, freedo
 ms\, security and so on). In this paper I refer to two responses.  First\,
  there is the establishment of a common and singular good life\, or One He
 alth.  Here\, pathological lives are constructed as an outside threat to t
 he norms of health and good life.  Second\, and in contrast\, there is a c
 osmopolitics\, wherein norms are  questioned rather than re-established.  
 Here\, emergent microbes and circulating resistant genes are not so much a
  threat to good life as a ‘passing fright that scares self-assurance’ 
 (Stengers 2005).  They can help to generate a situation with power to make
  us think.   In this second\, cosmopolitical approach\, pathological lives
  are not so much the problem\, but are part of the solution.  They require
  us to pursue a different common world\, a common sensing that is open to 
 the bewildering variety of what it means to be both in touch with and touc
 hed by ‘reality’ (Stengers 2009: 38).  
LOCATION:Small Lecture Theatre\, Department of Geography\, Downing Site
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