Non/Living Queerings, Undoing Certainties, and Braiding Vulnerabilities: A Collective Reflection

Abstract

The ongoing global pandemic of Covid-19 has exposed SARS-CoV-2 as a potent non-human actant that resists the joint scientific, public health and socio-political efforts to contain and understand both the virus and the illness. Yet, such a narrative appears to conceal more than it reveals. The seeming agentiality of the novel coronavirus is itself but one manifestation of the continuous destruction of biodiversity, climate change, socio-economic inequalities, neocolonialism, overconsumption and the anthropogenic degradation of nature. Furthermore, focusing on the virus – an entity that holds an ambiguous status between the ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ – brings into question the issue of the agentiality of non/living matter. While the story of viral potency seems to get centre stage, overshadowing the complex and perverse entanglement of processes and phenomena which activated these potentials in the first place, the Covid-19 pandemic also becomes a prism that sheds light on the issues of environmental violence; social and environmental injustices; more-than-human agentiality; and ethico-political responses that the present situation may mobilise. This article serves as a written record of joint conversations between artists and researchers in the working group ‘Non/Living Queerings’ that formed part of the online series of events ‘Braiding Friction’ organised by the research project Biofriction. The article strives to capture the collective effort of braiding and weaving a variety of situated perspectives, theoretical toolboxes, knowledges and experiences against the background of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, the text focuses on the issues of crisis, ‘amplification effect’, viral agency and the changing notions of humanity.

Reflecting on Boundary Crossings between Knowledge and Values:

“…Entangled time and space between plant, animal and human are more than an individual lesson; they hold deeper possibilities to be immersed in the complex interconnectedness of ecological life (Nyberg, 2017), but how can these 'braided vulnerabilities' (Radomska, Citlalli, Gómez, Pevere & Haapoja, 2021) be present in biology and biology-related teaching in ways that resonate with students beyond subject-content knowledge? Loughran (2002) has described reflective practice as «a lens into the world of practice" (p. 33).…”

“…Moreover, Planet Earth has reached a tipping point in which human-made materials now outweigh the biomass of the planet (Elhacham, et al, 2020). In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic can be seen as a prism: "shedding light on the issues of environmental violence; social and environmental injustices; temporal, spatial and material scales at work in the Anthropocene; more-than-human and non/ living agentiality; and ethico-political responses that the present situation may mobilise" (Radomska, et al 2021) Hence, in an era in which human-related activities are rapidly changing planetary constituents, the teaching of biology can be seen to require further incorporation of affective approaches (Alsop, 2016;Alsop & Dillon, 2018) in order to consider the critical question 'what is science education for?' (Gilbert, 2015) in such historical contexts.…”