Viral life: Covid-19's destabilisation of our thinking

Abstract

The question of life is and has been one of the most important and keenly contested questions of the modern era. What constitutes life? When does life begin? What is the essence of human life? What is the distinction, and how is this evidenced, between being alive and having life? And, whose life matters? These ideas were famously explored in Bruno Latour’s (2013) An Inquiry into Modes of Existence where he lays out the dilemma that faced us. All we have to rely on in understanding the world in which we live and in defining ourselves against that which is not ‘us’, he suggested, was science. But, can we trust science: ‘[w]hen it is a matter of obtaining valid knowledge about objects as complex as whole systems of the Earth, knowledge that must lead to radical changes in the most intimate details of existence for billions of people, it is infinitely safer to rely on the institution of science than on indisputable certainty. But also infinitely riskier’ (2013:4). The risk lies in placing our trust and understanding of the world in institutions of knowledge that have historically