<div dir="ltr">Thank you Renate, Jonathan, and Elizabeth, and to Junting for inviting me to participate. I've really appreciated the thoughtful and measured, yet personal reflections in my first weeks at empyre as I have been attempting to limit my consumption of news media. However, ironically, the more isolated we become from each other as people, from borders closing, and subsequently this week a bill enforcing a 28 days "circuit breaker" [<a href="https://www.gov.sg/article/covid-19-circuit-breaker-heightened-safe-distancing-measures-to-reduce-movement" target="_blank">https://www.gov.sg/article/covid-19-circuit-breaker-heightened-safe-distancing-measures-to-reduce-movement</a>] where households are prohibited from mingling, enforcing "social distancing," the more we are forced to consume news if only to keep abreast of the law.<div><br></div><div>The rhetoric about the pandemic in Singapore has been driven largely by a paternalistic state, which has been sending reassuring messages to the public while taking measures in phases. The first phase was during the initial outbreak in Wuhan, when travellers from the region were barred from entering or transiting in Singapore. These restrictions were expanded to other affected regions as the centers of the spikes were identified, so Europe and the ASEAN followed by the USA. The narrative was that the threat was coming externally and that by isolating travellers and returning citizens it could be contained. The government had been encouraging working from home and two weeks ago closed bars and nightclubs, barring public or private gatherings of over 10 people. Schools remained open, sending a mixed message to citizens who were wearing masks and using sanitizer and hoarding toilet paper. My daughter has only started "Home Based Learning" three days ago this Wednesday, the day after the circuit breaker bill was passed.</div><div><br></div><div>The xenophobia towards the Chinese that was seen in February began to abate as the concerns shifted more internally. The Singaporean population a majority of Chinese ethnicity calls Chinese nationals "PRCs" and considers them "other," often resentful of new immigrants and is expressed on the "blogosphere" and other informal channels. [<a href="https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Singaporeans-call-Chinese-people-PRCs" target="_blank">https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Singaporeans-call-Chinese-people-PRCs</a>]</div><div><br></div><div>The past few days, the focus has shifted to a different foreign threat. Foreign workers, largely South Asian, who work in construction and maintenance services in Singapore. </div><div><a href="https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/covid-19-record-287-new-cases-spore-219-infections-linked-dorms-foreign-workers-who-had-visited" target="_blank">https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/covid-19-record-287-new-cases-spore-219-infections-linked-dorms-foreign-workers-who-had-visited</a><br><a href="https://www.ricemedia.co/current-affairs-features-chaos-confusion-migrant-workers-fears-safety-salaries-covid-19/" target="_blank">https://www.ricemedia.co/current-affairs-features-chaos-confusion-migrant-workers-fears-safety-salaries-covid-19/</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>There was even a kerfuffle where a former minister was embarrassed for calling out foreign workers for gathering at an open field on Sundays their day off saying residents were often inconvenienced by these gatherings and that "it takes a virus to empty the space".</div><div><a href="https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/yaacob-ibrahim-apologises-facebook-remark-foreign-workers-gathering-near-kallang-mrt" target="_blank">https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/yaacob-ibrahim-apologises-facebook-remark-foreign-workers-gathering-near-kallang-mrt</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>The situation of bodies, governed by ethnicities and "place-ness", within the microcosm of a society organised by the vector of "the economy" has come to the forefront of thought and discussion with the emergence of Covid-19 as a threat to "life": sustaining the life of bodies, the lived experience of communities, the "health" of the economy, and what is hoped can be eliminated...the epidemiological life of the Covid-19 coronavirus. In this arrangement, I look to my friends Jonathan (as a reader of biological science like myself) and Elizabeth (who, amongst other things, has worked on aspects of racial representation in migrant diasporas).</div><div><br></div>As a reader of Derrida, I tend to agree with Jonathan on the paradoxical nature of the scientific understanding of "life" and what we might infer from it. Thank you for putting it so beautifully: "It is impossible to render oneself entirely immune to viruses without eliminating the life in oneself." <div><br></div><div>I am finding that, in Singapore and perhaps all over the world, the threat of contagion is linked essentially to an "other." At the most basic level this other is the "coronavirus" but also, more distinctly, the concern is who is carrying it as a host. For me, this distinction is an iteration of the basic distinction between mind/body, self-other, that is outlined by Derrida as "autoimmunity." The autoimmune thought in this way is a condition that constitutes conscious life. I have been thinking for some time that when Derrida states that “the living ego is auto-immune,” (Specters of Marx, 141) he describes a constitutive operation of the self that is an intervention in the thinking of the relation between “natural life” and “life of the spirit” and is an update to the understanding of Cartesian “dualism” which often stands in as the figure of rationality and allows something like the study of bodies that is "biology."</div><div><br></div><div>What's intriguing now with the rhetoric and practice of life in a global pandemic might be how the distinctions between viral life and embodied life, and the factor of bodies as the medium of contagion, intertwine on different circuits: scientific/medical, social/political, and economic/capital. As the policing and erection of borders heightened, the more they highlight the dependence of life as we know it on the transgression of these lines. Derrida's <i>Rogues</i> is particularly poignant here.</div><div><br></div><div>I hear those that rejoice the recovery of nature in the wake of the slowing of industrial production, the highlighting of the ethics of labour practices in capitalism, and the vast inequalities between people that have come to light. However, I am concerned about how these issues are to be addressed. As issues that we in the humanities and arts especially have been talking about and working on for decades, what now that we have the attention of the world for what is perhaps a brief moment? Can we recover from predatory capitalism? How will we cope without work or means of subsistence? Must our generation be sacrificed in order to take the time to build new ways of living? Can we trust those in charge to create a new way of being for us? </div><div><div><div><span style="color:rgb(82,81,81);font-family:"Open Sans",sans-serif;font-size:12px"></span><br></div></div></div><div>These questions occupy.</div><div><br></div><div>My warmest wishes to everyone,</div><div>Sorelle </div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://nus.academia.edu/SorelleHenricus">https://nus.academia.edu/SorelleHenricus</a><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 5:06 AM Jonathan Basile <<a href="mailto:jonathan.e.basile@gmail.com" target="_blank">jonathan.e.basile@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<div dir="ltr">Dear all,<div><br></div><div>Thank you to Junting and Renate for inviting me and to all the guests this week. I'm very excited to take part.</div><div><br></div><div><p style="margin:9pt 0in;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">A
while ago, my dissertation research on scientific and philosophical definitions
of life brought me to focus on viruses, which, ever since a pathogen was given
this name, have always problematized the boundaries between the organic and
inorganic, life and death. While it doesn’t speak directly to all of the
ethical and political issues raised by the COVID pandemic, it has shaped my
thinking about aspects of the crisis. In short, the thing that makes us
vulnerable to viruses is the thing that makes us alive.</span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">Our
knowledge of viruses was necessarily quite abstract at first - when it was
found that an agent of disease could pass through filters small enough to trap
bacteria these germs were called "viruses," a word that meant poison
but whose oldest meaning in English was "semen." </span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">In 1935 a virus
was crystallized for the first time, meaning quite literally that a population
of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus was formed into a crystal by heating and cooling.
This grabbed headlines because up to that time it was assumed there was an
absolute distinction between organic and inorganic matter (life and death), but
viruses were thought to be organic and crystals inorganic. The synthesis of
urea from inorganic chemicals was another milestone in proving this boundary
permeable.</span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">Since molecular
biology and the deciphering of the "genetic code," life has been
understood as what copies itself by storing instructions for reproducing itself
in its genes. Viruses have complicated this definition of life because they
clearly contain such instructions, but cannot copy "themselves"
without "hijacking" the machinery of another cell.</span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">Some theorists
and biologists therefore say they are not alive. Sometimes this leads to the
funny locution that they are not alive <em>because
they are parasites</em>. This may strike us as odd—aren’t parasites alive?
If we bear down on the question, we find that in fact no life form can persist
without taking something in from the environment and from other living things,
and that in fact this responsiveness to the environment (sometimes called
purposiveness) is the very definition of life. </span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">Viruses are able to use us as machines because we are machines
to ourselves. We are able to live because we can rely on the functioning of our
own cellular machinery. Without the hospitality that makes us vulnerable to viruses,
our own life would be impossible.</span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">The signs of this are everywhere. One hypothesis (though it is
not a consensus view) of the origin of life (abiogenesis) posits that the earliest
not-quite-living things were viruses, and that life as we know it originated as
a defense against their intrusions upon free-floating nucleotide chains. This
is known as the Virus World theory. </span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">Furthermore, some of the most basic means of genetic transfer
and continuity among the earliest lifeforms rely upon certain viruses
(bacteriophages). And these transfers continue between viruses and all the kingdoms of life, </span><span style="color:rgb(45,59,69);font-family:"Helvetica Neue";font-size:12pt">in what can’t even be called </span>inter-species<span style="color:rgb(45,59,69);font-family:"Helvetica Neue";font-size:12pt">
hybridization but, according to prevalent theories, are matings of life with
non-life. Ten percent of the human
genome is thought to have derived from genes deposited in us by viruses, many
of which provide beneficial contributions to our organism.</span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">Viruses are the origin of life and its continuity, and what
makes us vulnerable to the worst is also what grants us the possibility of the
best. Gene therapy, a cutting edge method for treating diseases that involves
implanting genes in our genome, depends on viruses as a gene delivery system.
Either a virus has its genetic material removed and synthetic genes implanted
in it, or a synthetic carrier is constructed that is modeled after a virus. </span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">While this doesn’t speak directly to the particular political
corruption and incompetence exacerbating the COVID-19 pandemic, it is not
entirely divorced from an ethico-political reflection on our current crisis. It
is impossible to render oneself entirely immune to viruses without eliminating
the life in oneself. And it is not simply a metaphorical application of this principle
to say that while there are good methods of prevention (e.g. social distancing)
against bad viruses, the same logic quickly becomes its opposite. Any
intervention that tries to focus aid within our own borders, as if nothing
could cross them (for example, sanctions preventing medical supplies from reaching Iran,
or <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/03/ppe-world-supplies-coronavirus-163955" style="color:rgb(5,99,193)" target="_blank">stealing
PPE from other countries</a>), can only exacerbate the pandemic here.</span></p>
<p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">Virality is vitality, for better and for worse.</span></p><p style="margin:9pt 0in 0.0001pt;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:rgb(45,59,69)">Best,</span></p><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Jonathan Basile</div><div dir="ltr"><font size="1"><a href="https://punctumbooks.com/titles/tar-for-mortar/" target="_blank">Tar for Mortar: The Library of Babel and the Dream of Totality</a> || <a href="https://punctumbooks.com/titles/massa-por-argamassa-a-biblioteca-de-babel-e-o-sonho-de-totalidade/" target="_blank">em português</a><br></font></div><div dir="ltr"><font size="1"><a href="http://jonathanbasile.info" target="_blank">jonathanbasile.info</a> || <a href="http://libraryofbabel.info" target="_blank">libraryofbabel.info</a></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 12:46 PM Renate Ferro <<a href="mailto:rferro@cornell.edu" target="_blank">rferro@cornell.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
Many thanks to our special guests Christina McPhee and Melinda Rackham. Also to William Bain, Simon, Aviva Rahmani, Brett Stalbaum, Cengiz Salman, Gary Hall and of course my two fellow moderators Tim Murray and Junting Huang for posting this past week. The tone this week has been introspective yet also critical of the political, social, and cultural conditions so many of us are facing globally. We welcome our next set of invited guests Jonathan Basile, Sorelle Henricus, Gloria Kim, Cengiz Salman, Paul Vanouse, and Elizabeth Wijiaya. We invite you all to share your thoughts about your own work and experiences from where you are writing this week. Looking forward to hearing from all of you and again please be well and stay safe. <br>
<br>
Also, just to throw this out Christina McPhee had a great idea. If any of you are making COVID inspired work or work that is generated from our current situation please feel free to post links within the empyre text but also to post on our FACEBOOK page. <br>
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/empyrelistserv/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/groups/empyrelistserv/</a><br>
<br>
Best to you all, <br>
Renate Ferro<br>
<br>
Week 2: Biographies<br>
Jonathan Basile is a Ph.D. Candidate in Emory University’s Comparative Literature program and the creator of an online universal library, <a href="http://libraryofbabel.info" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">libraryofbabel.info</a>. His first book, Tar for Mortar: “The Library of Babel” and the Dream of Totality, has been published by punctum books and translated into Portuguese. His academic writing on biodeconstruction and on irony has been published in the Oxford Literary Review, Critical Inquiry, Derrida Today, Variaciones Borges, Environmental Philosophy, Postmodern Culture, CR: The New Centennial Review and is forthcoming in Angelaki. His para-academic writing has been published in The Paris Review Daily, Public Books, Berfrois, Guernica, and minor literature[s]. This work can be accessed at <a href="http://jonathanbasile.info" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">jonathanbasile.info</a>.<br>
<br>
Sorelle Henricus works in the areas of critical theory, modern and contemporary literature and visual arts, and aesthetics and politics especially as it pertains to science and technology in culture. Her doctoral work traced the significance of the parallels between deconstruction and molecular biology, particularly converging around the concept of the gene as being constructed as primarily an artefact of data. <br>
<br>
Gloria Kim is Assistant Professor of Media and Culture at the University of California-Riverside. She works in the areas of the environmental humanites, science and technology studies, and media and visual culture. She is currently writing a book manuscript titled "The Microbial Resolve: Vision, Mediation, and Security," in which she explores modes of mediation, forms of kinship, means of capital, and senses of life and living surfacing amid efforts to manage emerging viruses. In a second project, Gloria examines discourses of the microbiome bridging insight from critical data studies, social theory, affect, security studies, material culture, and the anthropocene. <br>
<br>
Cengiz Salman (he/him) is a PhD candidate in the Department of American Culture (Digital Studies) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His dissertation research broadly focuses on the relationship between digital media, algorithms, unemployment, and racial capitalism. He holds a<br>
Master of Arts degree in Social Science from the University of Chicago (2013), and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology with a specialization in Muslim Studies from Michigan State University (2011). Salman is a recipient of a Fulbright IIE Award, which he used to conduct research on urban transformation projects in Turkey from 2011-2012.<br>
<br>
Paul Vanouse is an artist and professor of Art at the University at Buffalo, NY, where he is the founding director of the Coalesce Center for Biological Art. Interdisciplinarity and impassioned amateurism guide his (bio-media) art practice, which uses molecular biology techniques to challenge “genome hype” and to explore critical issues surrounding contemporary biotechnologies. Vanouse’s projects have been funded by Rockefeller Foundation, Creative Capital Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Sun Microsystems, and the National Science Foundation. His bio-media and interactive cinema projects have been exhibited in over 25 countries and widely across the US. His scent-based bioartwork, Labor, was awarded a Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica, 2019. He has an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University.<br>
<br>
<br>
Elizabeth Wijaya is Assistant Professor of East Asian Cinema in the Department of Visual Studies and Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. She is co-founder of the Singapore-based film production company, E&W Films. She is working on her book manuscript on the visible and invisible worlds of trans-Chinese cinema. <br>
<br>
Renate Ferro<br>
Visiting Associate Professor<br>
Director of Undergraduate Studies<br>
Department of Art<br>
Tjaden Hall 306<br>
<a href="mailto:rferro@cornell.edu" target="_blank">rferro@cornell.edu</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></blockquote></div>
_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></blockquote></div>