Becoming Without

Abstract

The Aedes aegypti mosquito, known as the vector for Zika, dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever viruses, has historically been targeted by public health campaigns as an enemy to be eliminated. However, new strategies, such as the transgenic approach, biologically modify the A. aegypti so that they can be deployed to control their own population—here, mosquito breeding and mating is operationalized as an insecticide. In this case, the insect must be simultaneously a friend and an enemy, cared for and killed, and it must establish encounters and nonencounters. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a “biofactory” in the northeast of Brazil dedicated to mass-producing these transgenic mosquitoes, this article investigates the new forms of labor and value produced through these contrasting human-mosquito relations. The author also examines how the project is implemented within broader geopolitics of experimentation and more-than-human gendered conceptions. Analyzing the multispecies relationships engendered under the premise that it is possible to produce nonencounters, she identifies the historical conditions and promissory claims of transforming the A. aegypti ’s reproductive capacity into labor for killing. Such recasting yields what the author calls the “nonencounter value” within the scientific remaking of mosquitoes, their becoming and being.

Zoonotic urbanisation: multispecies urbanism and the rescaling of urban epidemiology

“…For the Aedes vectors that breed in temporary water bodies to avoid predators there has been attention on the role of small crustaceans such as copepods or the introduction of other mosquito species that are specialised predators of mosquito larvae such as the harmless Toxorhynchites genus. Yet another approach has been the release of transgenic mosquitoes to render offspring infertile, opening up a new field of entomological experimentation and biotech profitability (Beisel and Boe¨te, 2013;Reis-Castro, 2021). In practice, however, these biological control programmes have often proved complex and expensive to sustain over longer periods, and if these measures are interrupted or funding runs out the numbers of dangerous insect vectors quickly recover.…”

Predatory Fleas, Sterile Flies, and the Settlers

“…Such a declaration enables agricultural exports to countries like the United States or Japan, which enforce a strict no‐entry zone for crops contaminated by the Mediterranean fruit fly. Although battlefield metaphors usually accompany struggles against insects (Russell 2001; Reis‐Castro 2021), the struggle against the flies in the Arava has been mobilized as a symbol of the peace processes between humans (Gutkowski 2021).…”

“…Many insects live and buzz around us, in what the anthropologist Hugh Raffles (2010, 7) refers to as “aerial plankton.” When we talk about human–animal relations, we generally refer to our relationship with pets or other common animals. But a large proportion of those animals that come into contact with humans fail to garner scholarly and public attention, although they can occasionally play a substantial role in driving historical events or cultural and institutional changes (Mitchell 2002; Reis‐Castro 2021; Tubi 2021).…”

The Substitute and the Excuse

“…In all, this article asks how specific materials of growth make sugarcane into a “capitalist species” today (Blanchette 2020). Staying with the trouble (Haraway 2016) of plant science, it asks what can be learned from sugarcane's molecules (Murphy 2017a; Myers 2015; Sanabria 2016; Agard‐Jones 2014; Choy 2011) via scientists' attunements to them (Hartigan 2017; Reis‐Castro 2021; Wanderer 2018; Helmreich 2009). By analyzing how Brazilian scientists' research aligns with (sustainable) growth, this article shows how minute technical practices establish the conditions for reinforcing the petro status quo and/or opening more pluripotent possibilities.…”