Lecture

Pathological lives - or the challenge of losing self-assurance

Wageningen Geography Lectures 2015/2016

Steve Hinchliffe

The paper introduces research on zoonotic disease and antimicrobial resistance in order to question the ways in which these pathological threats to modern life are addressed. Using the philosophy of Isabelle Stengers, I contrast two possibilities. On the one hand, there are biopolitical approaches which involve the unification of health (one health) and norms-of-living. On the other, the social dynamicities of microbial lives can help to generate a new situation, one that forces us to think again about how we construct this modern life. It is the latter, I will argue, that offers most hope for living better pathological lives.