TheMaterialismofBiologicalEncounters 69
Biotic mobility is, as I hope to show,both the same as and different
from those other mobility practices which have long been discussed in
American Cultural Studies. Its axes are horizontal and latitudinal—like
those of other forms of mobility. Sometimes, the mobility of biotic
material (germs, viruses, bodily fluids) works in tandem with,
sometimesagainst,thatofpeople,materialgoods,orinformation.Butit
always operates in the same transnational spaces and along the very
same routes as other more mundane mobility practices. In addition, the
mobile biota which affect, even infect, other human beings are
evolutionary masterpieces of mobility, deserving to be counted among
the world's "long-distance specialists" (Mary Helms's term) as they
movefast,unnoticedanduncheckedovervastspaces,acrossoceansand
deserts, and in doing so, they bring together people otherwise sharply
divided along lines of wealth, religion, politics. One can also borrow a
fashionable term from our discipline here, and speak of their "passing"
or better still, their passing somethingon. And much of what American
Cultural Studies have said about the social and cultural dynamics of
passing as "a highly charged site for anxieties regarding visibility,
invisibility, classification, and social demarcation" (Schlossberg 1) is
true also of this particular mode of a biological passing, respectively;
passing-on.
Biological encounters between humans, their "being-in-common"
with other humans (Nancy xxxix) takes on a critical edge when the
otherness of these others is experienced as problematic, as is often the
casewithsocial,religious,cultural,sometimesevenvisualothers.Their
biological characteristics (real or imaginary) then become a medium
throughwhichthisothernessarticulatesitselforisarticulatedwithother
concerns. Migrants and other displaced people are archetypes of such
others.Thebiologicalencountersthatevolveinthewakeoftheirarrival
have been a shaping influence in the history of the United States as a
self-styled"nationofimmigrants":
While most of us remain firmly convinced that the tradition of
welcoming newcomers constitutes one of the finest variables of the
Americanexperiment,wecannotdenytherisksofimportedinfection.In
recentyears,theseriskshavebeenmagnified...Therapidinternational