Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-2021
Abstract
This multi-authored contribution explores what the COVID-19 pandemic demands of critical inquiry with a focus on the more-than-human. We show how COVID-19 is a complex series of multispecies encounters shaped by humans, non-human animals, and of course viruses. Central to these encounters is a politics of difference in which certain human lives are protected and helped to flourish while others, both human and animal, are forgotten if not sacrificed. Such difference encompasses practices of racialisation and racism, healthcare austerity, the circulation of capital, border-making, intervention into non-human nature, wildlife trade bans, anthropocentrism, and the exploitation of animal test subjects. The contributions highlight how COVID-19 provides a needed opportunity to unite new materialist and anti-racist, anti-colonial scholarship as well as reimagine more radically sustainable multispecies futures. This requires embracing anti-colonial humility, confronting debts owed to lab animal frontline workers, and rethinking economic systems that helped unleash COVID-19 and ensured it became a disaster.
Copyright Statement
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article:
Lunstrum, E., Ahuja, N., Braun, B., Collard, R., Lopez, P.J., & Wong, R.W.Y. (2021). More‐Than‐Human and Deeply Human Perspectives on COVID‐19. Antipode, 53(5), 1503-1525,
which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12730. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.
Publication Information
Lunstrum, Elizabeth; Ahuja, Neel; Braun, Bruce; Collard, Rosemary; Lopez, Patricia J.; and Wong, Rebecca W.Y., "More-Than-Human and Deeply Human Perspectives on COVID-19" (2021). Global Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations. 8.
https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/global_facpubs/8