58 RüdigerKunow
local form ofglobalconnectivities. To trace this often imaginative
processwillbeamainfocusofthepresentargument.
Biology makes community, a community which takes place in
passingon, and this is an observation taken for granted in the life- and
bio-sciences, but curiously less so in cultural critical contexts. In fact,
the travel or transmission of biotic material from one human being to
another is one of the oldest, most obstinate mysteries of humankind,
even for the brightest minds of their time so that these processes
remainedshroudedinafogofrumorsandspeculations,eventoday.This
is why they generate an imaginative surplus. To add to that, disease
transmission,aswehaveseen,doesnotdevolveeasilyintotherealmof
human plausibilities and requires instead special training plus
sophisticated technological equipment to become noticeable and
understandable. And finally, epidemic diseases usually appear on the
scene suddenly and without warning: their "suddenly erupting, locally
self-organizing, systematically self-amplifying threat" (Massumi,
"Emergency" 154) is often experienced like a bolt out the blue, also for
epidemiologicalexpertsandpublicadministrators.
Taken together, these factors go some way toward explaining why
biologicalencounters––inadditiontotheirmassivebiomedicalimport—
perform important social but also political if not geopolitical work. The
imaginative surplus generated in the context of such encounters more
often than not invokes the image of a community of (biological)
vulnerability, an unwitting victim to myriad invisible enemies,
embodied in dangerous, if not deadly, biotic material. Such a feeling is
particularly strong in the United States after the events of 9/11. A
Newsweekarticle put it this way: "[i]n recent years the world has
changed in ways that have made the threats of natural and man-made
epidemics more and more alike.... The central driver is the
increasinglyinterconnectedworld welivein [andwherediseases]show
up in far-flung towns and cities" ("Opinion" n. pag.). This is a
biopolitical as well as geopolitical fantasy, highly charged with the
affective and political intensities in the present moment of U.S. history.
In this "affective commotion" (Massumi,Power2), human biology is
fast becoming a trope for all manner of dangers to the national welfare.
TheNewsweekarticle evokes the specter of terrorism and, as W. J. T.
Mitchell, Ruth Mayer and others have suggested, "on the level of
imageryandimagination,allterrorismisbioterrorism,evenwhenituses