[-empyre-] Welcome to Week 2 on -empyre_

[Jonathan Basile]

Dear all,

Thank you to Junting and Renate for inviting me and to all the guests this
week. I'm very excited to take part.

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.

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."

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.

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.

Some theorists and biologists therefore say they are not alive. Sometimes
this leads to the funny locution that they are not alive *because they are
parasites*. 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.

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.

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.

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, in what can’t even be called inter-species 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.

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.

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 stealing PPE from other countries
<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/03/ppe-world-supplies-coronavirus-163955>),
can only exacerbate the pandemic here.

Virality is vitality, for better and for worse.

Best,
Jonathan Basile
Tar for Mortar: The Library of Babel and the Dream of Totality
<https://punctumbooks.com/titles/tar-for-mortar/> || em português
<https://punctumbooks.com/titles/massa-por-argamassa-a-biblioteca-de-babel-e-o-sonho-de-totalidade/>
jonathanbasile.info || libraryofbabel.info


On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 12:46 PM Renate Ferro <rferro at cornell.edu> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 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.
>
> 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.
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/empyrelistserv/
>
> Best to you all,
> Renate Ferro
>
> Week 2:  Biographies
> Jonathan Basile is a Ph.D. Candidate in Emory University’s Comparative
> Literature program and the creator of an online universal library,
> libraryofbabel.info. 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 jonathanbasile.info.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
>
> 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.
>
> Renate Ferro
> Visiting Associate Professor
> Director of Undergraduate Studies
> Department of Art
> Tjaden Hall 306
> rferro at cornell.edu
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
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