68 RüdigerKunow
biologicalformsofmobilityareatleastas,ifnotmore,potentthanother
forms of travel and translocation. And this brings us back to the
relationship mentioned between biological encounters and affective
intensities.
In recent years, the mobility of people, products, and ideas has
becomeoneofthecentralconcernsofEuroAmericanmodernity,outside
andinsidetheacademy.Actually,ithasbeenamajorissuemuchlonger.
Since the beginning of European colonization, millions of people have
moved from one place to another and from there to still others (onward
ormultiplemigration),andtheywerealwaysbringingtheirbodiesalong
with them. This may sound banal but it is not a trivial observation
becauseit remindsusthatmobilityhasnever been andwillnever bean
ethereal, bloodless, and aseptic translocation of people. Rather, it is
inescapably, intrinsically, anembodied process. All humans are in this
sense carriers—carriers of their own set of biological endowment—
whichtheninteractswiththeendowmentsofotherhumansandotherlife
forms co-present in the same biosphere. And this means that biology is
alwaysimplicatedandimpliedinhumanmobility.Inaninfluentialessay
in the prestigious journalScience,Richard M. Krause has tabulated the
causes of mass diseases, past and present, and related them to human
mobility.Amongthesecauses"themostimportantfactoristhespreadof
microbial organisms from points of origin as a result of the migration
andtraveloftheirhumanhosts"(Krause1073).Inthisperspective,then,
biotic mobility might be considered as the dark twin, the dangerous
supplement^20 to human and other forms of mobility. It rides piggyback
onotheragentsandpracticesofmobility.
(^20) I am aware that this phrase echoes Derrida's well-known reflections on
"supplementarity"inthecontextofhisrepeatedepistemo-ontologicalcritiqueof
the self-presence of language and persons. This echo is not to be denied here,
evenlesssosinceDerrida'snotionofthesupplementasan"adjunct,asubaltern
instance which takes the place of" (Grammatology145) has some analytical
purchase also in the present context. As several of the cases to be presented in
this chapter will illustrate, biological mobility, seemingly a by-product of
personal or commercial mobility often obliterated both. Recent examples are
travel bans and the suspension of commercial exchanges during the Ebola and
MERSepidemicsof2015.