TheMaterialismofBiologicalEncounters 67
reproductive rights, I am using her argument here because it offers a
good description also for how and why the biological ceases to be the
personalandinsteadbecomesthepolitical.Undersuchconditions—very
muchthoseoftheneoliberalUnitedStatesinthenewmillennium—,the
contingencies of biological endowments and encounters become
invested with (in the original sense of the phrase) larger-than-life
systemicsignificance.Throughthebiologicalencounterswhichmakeup
its substance, the communities forged in moments of biological
encounter are highly contingent and volatile, hence the investments of
suchencounterswithaffectiveintensitiestowhichIwillnowturn.
BiologyandHumanMobility
Inordertobetterunderstandthenexusofemergenceandemergency
together with the affects mobilized at moments of biology encounter, it
is necessary to insert a brief reflection on the relationship between
biology, and especially the biology of the human body, and human
mobility practices. This necessitates first of all an expansion of the
concept of mobility over and beyond the much discussed concepts of
individual and collective mobility, which have long been a central area
ofinterestforAmericanCulturalStudies.
When we think about mobility, we tend to envision millions of
migrants, exiles, diasporans, sojourners or displaced persons changing
locationsinanever-endingprocess.Thisiswhymobilityisessentiallya
restless practice,one that affects bodies and minds. Possibly because
this process is so overwhelmingly impressing itself on our minds,
mobilityisoftensaidtobea"factoflife"(Cresswell22).Thisisindeed
an interesting catachresis, to which I would add: mobility is also a fact
oflifemoving among and between people and places. Mobile biotic
materialsofvariousshapesandsizesmakeupanoftenunacknowledged
butnonethelessvitalpartofthe"endlessprocessofcomingsandgoings
that create familial, cultural, linguistic, and economic ties across
national borders" (24) that Shelley Fisher Fishkin has invoked as the
emblem of American mobility, past and present. And one could
certainly make the point here that these materials (like the humans that
aresometimestheirunwittingcarriers)producematerialresults,oftenof
a catastrophic nature—medical mass events such as scourges, plagues,
epidemics. Because of this, it is, I think, empirically arguable that