Eric Kluitenberg on Thu, 12 Mar 2020 12:58:07 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> coronavirus questions


Hi Sebastian, all,

Good questions - though I have not much to say about the (‘radical’?) left. But the schizo-analysis question is interesting: 

> On 12 Mar 2020, at 09:21, sebastian@rolux.org wrote:
> 
> - What is the perspective on coronavirus from the vantage point of
>  Schizoanalysis?

Probably a lot of points could be made, a.o. about the way in which existential territories are compromised by the mental distortions of (over-)reactions to the viral spread. However, for me the most interesting issue that has emerged is to think this through transversally across the ecological registers that Guattari has identified all the way back in 1989, i.e. the material environment, the social relations, and the individual universes of reference (subjective experience). What is missing in the model that Guattari proposed in The Three Ecologies, in general, but even more pressing right now, is the fourth register of nonhuman experience.

So we might ask, what does the COVID-19 emergence look and feel like from the perspective of the virus itself? How does it experience the hostility with which it was met upon its emanation into the existent? 

Some people have observed that maybe we should be humbled, as humans, to finally take the presence, the tendencies and the capacities of the nonhumans (including the viral nonhumans) seriously into account. Another fascinating suggestion was that with the virus spreading and human logistics disrupted the virus is able to do what the collective agency of the political elites and structures of governance have so far been totally unable to deliver: CO2 emissions have been cut dramatically and continue to fall - to such an extent that we may, collectively, on a planetary level, still be able to deliver on the promises of CO2 reduction pledged in the Paris Climate Agreement.

If I wasn’t to sceptical by default I would almost be lead to wonder if this is Gaia responding to the human-induced planetary disequilibrium?

all bests,
Eric
        


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