Interdependence of human/non-human life: COVID-19 and disputed hypotheses
Lorena Navarro Mine[1]
Without yet knowing the full extent of the destabilizing effects of COVID-19 on the already crisis-ridden capitalist organization and management of life and the interdependent relationships that sustain it, what we have seen is that the speed of the locomotive of progress—to borrow the metaphor of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin—is slowing down, contrary to the discourses that proclaimed the systemic impossibility of a change of course. In recent weeks, we have clearly witnessed a process of imbalance and deceleration in the rhythms of production and social reproduction organized according to the logic of profit.
In dialogue with the readings that have been shared on social media, which encourage the recognition of the political implications of this slowdown, I wonder about the possibilities that this context enables for setting in motion other imaginaries and political forms that place the reproduction of human and non-human life at the center, and in particular, experiencing the opening of a time to rethink our interdependence with the companion species that make human life what it is and vice versa.[2]
These days we've realized that, without knowing exactly what will be irreversibly changed after the emergency, it won't be possible to return to what we knew, and we have a strong feeling that this could be very painful, though also healthy and desirable, because that normality is unsustainable and untenable in psychological, social, and ecological terms. As journalist Naomi Klein says, there's constant talk of returning to normal, but normal is deadly. "Normal" is an immense crisis.[3]
Amid the enormous amount of information produced and disseminated in recent weeks about the many possible angles for analyzing COVID-19, several explanations are emerging regarding the reasons for the contagion. If we explore these explanations and remain engaged in this process of meaning-making, we can better understand what is happening and what may come. This will allow us, even amidst the heteronomy of health regulations, to utilize our capacity to listen, intervene, and decide what and how to do—during and after the crisis—bringing our needs and desires to the forefront. This involves fostering exercises in imagination and collective organization to sustain life and address the most urgent needs.
The production of meaning about the COVID-19 pandemic in the form of scientific articles, reports, journalistic notes, academic essays and others, is inscribed, explicitly or implicitly, in an explanatory and argumentative framework of the emergence or “causes” of COVID-19 and in a matrix of understanding the interdependencies between human and non-human life, that is, in how humans organize themselves among themselves and are in relation to all living beings on earth.
In what follows, I share in an exploratory way three hypotheses that have helped me to organize an understanding of some of the explanatory frameworks of the emergence of the pandemic, which become operational in the political management of the crisis in the hands of nation-states and which are in clear dispute to establish the terms of what is to come.
Incorrect and erroneous human behavior: cause of pandemics
A publication illustrating the hypothesis that humans are the cause of COVID-19 was recently released by the World Wildlife Fund Italy.[4] which argues that “zoonoses [diseases transmitted from non-human animals to humans] are directly related to the incorrect behavior of people, including the illegal trade in controlled wildlife species and, in general, the impact of man which has led to the destruction of natural ecosystems.” The study highlights “that human health can be protected precisely defending nature.”
It also points out that “coronavirus is part of the so-called emerging diseases, such as Ebola, AIDS, SARS, avian or swine flu, and most of them have arisen as a consequence of erroneous behavior of man, through the illegal or uncontrolled practice of the wild animal trade.”
It is proposed that the solution to this problem is “Protect natural ecosystems, conserve the planet’s uncontaminated areas, combat the consumption and trafficking of wild species, rebuild the balance of damaged ecosystems, and halt climate change.”
If we analyze this explanatory framework, the human It appears as an abstract category or fictitious unit that obscures individual responsibilities and homogenizes concrete forms of intervention in the fabric of life, as well as the various co-productions and forms of appropriation of nature. At the same time, it omits the capitalist dynamic and its responsibility in setting the destructive patterns of ecosystemic and thermodynamic transformations on the planet in order to guarantee the accumulation of value.
One proposed solution to the problem of pandemics is the implementation of measures conservationistsThat is, protecting nature from human activity, without distinguishing in these declarations between the ventures of large corporations, which, on an industrial scale and using destructive and polluting methods, extract raw materials, and the livelihoods of local populations. This approach has been widely criticized for assuming that the ecological crisis stems from an inherent destructiveness of human beings, and that the human condition can be separated from nature, as if we were not an intrinsic part of the same socio-ecological metabolism. Contrary to this assumption, it has been demonstrated that the existence of large concentrations of biodiversity is, in part, a result of the intervention of human culture, which modifies and fosters the relationships between species, plant communities, and animals. The type of relationship that indigenous and rural farming communities have cultivated with the land and territory has fostered biocultural diversity and ecosystem variety.[5]
War between species: the pandemic as the enemy
In various news reports and articles about COVID-19, words like "war" and "enemy" abound. Perhaps among the earliest pronouncements was that of French President Emmanuel Macron, who emphatically and repeatedly declared, "We are at war […] We are not fighting against another army or another nation, but the enemy is there and is advancing."
In short, countless materials describe COVID-19 as an invisible, cunning, and public enemy, and argue that saving humanity requires waging an "irregular" war for our lives. The deployment of military and armed forces in the streets of many cities around the world bears witness to this.
Behind the use of warlike language in these narratives lies the “scientific truth” that assumes competition is the dominant logic in the struggle for survival among species. Indeed, the Darwinian idea of natural selection and the evolution of species, which has spread and is now common sense for all of us, is that only those who, through competition, manage to rise in the hierarchy by acquiring advantageous mutations survive. The war today is against a virus that must be defeated, which includes a speciesist attack, in various physical geographies and social imaginaries, against bats, one of the most important pollinators on Earth, for being considered “responsible for the infection.”
This hypothesis, like the one previously presented, ignores the fact that capitalist co-production is responsible for the ecosystemic alterations that have facilitated the spread of the virus. Clearly, the discourse of war establishes a binary vision of good versus evil; friend versus enemy; those who can stay home versus those who cannot. This not only overshadows the discussion about the need to change the orientation of capitalist political economy with its inherent corollary of violent appropriation of nature, but also generates a sense of immunity by establishing a segregative boundary in exclusionary, racist, and nationalist terms.
Political management, from this perspective, is intertwined with the most authoritarian and fascist facets of biopolitical control, advancing deceitfully through the use of all-powerful technology and a war policy that fuels selfish, competitive, and predatory practices among the population, while also obscuring the root causes of the crisis and the responsibility of capitalism.
As Ángel Luis Lara points out, faced with the collective perception of a war against a coronavirus, “perhaps it is more accurate to think that it is a catastrophic social formation that has been at war with us for far too long. The conditions for its spread include the effect of four decades of neoliberal policies that have dramatically eroded the social infrastructures that help sustain life.”[6]
The capitalist civilizational crisis: scenario of emergency, propagation and management of COVID-19
“The origin of the spread of COVID-19 is directly related to the circuits of capital.”
Rob Wallace (Big Farms Make Big Flu)[7]
“Capitalism itself is the main vector of disease”
John Bellamy Foster[8]
Various investigations have been questioning the etiology of zoonotic diseases, finding and making explicit a clear relationship between "epidemiology and political economy".[9] That is, the expansion of the capitalist way of life and the destruction of habitats —intensive industrial production of animal protein, urbanization, megaprojects, agribusiness, predatory tourism, trafficking of species, wildlife market— have generated the conditions conducive to the spread of vectors that transmit zoonotic diseases, from non-human animals to humans.[10]
So far, we know that there are two ways in which capitalism creates and unleashes increasingly deadly epidemics: the first involves the creation of viruses within industrial environments. The second is indirect, where previously unknown viruses are essentially collected from populations poorly integrated into the logic of value and distributed throughout global capital circuits.[11] Many of the virus's spread routes have coincided precisely with air transport routes facilitated by tourism and commercial activity.[12]
The capitalist industrialization of the food cycle, particularly of agricultural production, has increased the possibilities of contact between wildlife and livestock, raising the risk of transmission of diseases originating from wild animals whose habitats are being dramatically affected by deforestation.[13]
The truth is that capitalist co-production within the fabric of life has been degrading ecosystem complexity and, therefore, diminishing the self-regulating capacities of living systems. The emergence of COVID-19 cannot be separated from this dynamic, which many researchers, primarily Jason W. Moore, have characterized as the Capitalocene, understood as a geological era dominated by capital and its logic of profit accumulation, which has been drastically transforming the fabric of life globally and on a large scale.[14]
Food for thought…
These three hypotheses are not the only ones, but they show where the symbolic dispute may be heading in order to obscure the unsustainability of capitalism and its responsibility in this crisis, as well as to impose a common sense that closes the door on further deepening a capitalist management of interdependence, based on the anthropocentric and androcentric fantasy of the heteropatriarchal regime that conceives of the human species, and in particular the white, bourgeois, male, adult, and heterosexual subject,[15] as the measure and center of everything. COVID-19 cannot be the enemy, nor the precursor of a war, nor the scapegoat that justifies the reintegration of our vital forces, after the emergency, into the same or a more radicalized system of profit-driven death at all costs. The war is that of capital against all forms of life and its relentless pursuit to fracture and reorganize socio-ecological metabolisms to guarantee its exploitation. We cannot return to that normality from which we came, because that normality and its biocidal content are the source of this crisis. I trust that this is a time that opens up other sensibilities for organizing our interdependent relationships without exploitation and the cooperative ways in which we wish and need to reconnect to sustain life.
Life did not conquer the planet through combat, but through cooperation. Life forms multiplied and became more complex by associating with others, not by killing them.
Lynn Margulis (A Revolution in Evolution, 2003)
[1] Sociologist, professor at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities of BUAP, Puebla-Mexico. Co-coordinator of the Working Group “Political Ecologies from the South/Abya Yala” of CLACSO.
[2] According to Donna Haraway, companion species are all the organic beings that are part of endosymbiotic tissues, such as rice, bees, tulips, and gut flora. In dialogue with this multispecies perspective, I recommend the work of Vanesa Ramírez Carsolio to consider the political power of antispeciesism and the relationships of co-production with companion species in patriarchal and colonial capitalism.
[3] Moreno, Diana, “Naomi Klein: People talk about when things will return to normal, but normal was the crisis,” The Jump, April 1, 2020. Available at: https://www.elsaltodiario.com/coronavirus/entrevista-naomi-klein-gente-habla-volver-normalidad-crisis-doctrina-shock
[4] “Coronavirus and pandemics: a rebound effect from the destruction of ecosystems?” Sustainable WeekMarch 16, 2020. Available at: https://sostenibilidad.semana.com/medio-ambiente/articulo/coronavirus-y-pandemias-efecto-rebote-de-la-destruccion-de-ecosistemas/48979 y http://www.redrural.org.py/coronavirus-y-pandemias-efecto-rebote-de-la-destruccion-de-los-ecosistemas/ Full information is available on the WWF Italy website: https://www.wwf.it/pandemie_e_distruzione_degli_ecosistemi.cfm
[5] One such investigation is that of the ethnologist Eckart Boege Schmidt, The biocultural heritage of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, National Institute of Anthropology and History, National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples, Mexico, 2008.
[6] Lara, Ángel Luis “Causality of the pandemic, quality of the catastrophe”, Eldiario.es, March 29, 2020. Available at:https://www.eldiario.es/interferencias/Causalidad-pandemia-cualidad-catastrofe_6_1010758925.html
[7] Wallace, Rob; Liebman, Alex, Chavez, Luis; Wallace, Rodrick, “Covid-19 and circuits of capital”, Monthly Review, April 1, 2020. Available at: https://monthlyreview.org/2020/04/01/covid-19-and-circuits-of-capital/
[8] Interview with John Bellamy Foster, “Capitalism has failed. The choice is ruin or revolution,” Chaos on the Net, April 5, 2020. Available at: https://kaosenlared.net/entrevista-a-bellamy-foster-el-capitalismo-ha-fracasado-la-disyuntiva-es-la-ruina-o-la-revolucion/
[9] Lara, Ángel Luis “Causality of the pandemic, quality of the catastrophe”, Eldiario.es, March 29, 2020. Available at:https://www.eldiario.es/interferencias/Causalidad-pandemia-cualidad-catastrofe_6_1010758925.html
[10] Almazán, Adrián, “We have come to a screeching halt: now we must change direction”, Eldiario.es, March 28, 2020. Available at: https://www.eldiario.es/ultima-llamada/parado-seco-ahora-cambiar-direccion_6_1009709045.html
[11] Chuang “Social Contagion: Microbiological Class Warfare in China” Immanent Artillery, March 3, 2020. Available at: https://artilleriainmanente.noblogs.org/?p=1334
[12] Almazán, Adrián, “We have come to a screeching halt: now we must change direction”, Eldiario.es, March 28, 2020. Available at: https://www.eldiario.es/ultima-llamada/parado-seco-ahora-cambiar-direccion_6_1009709045.html
[13] Lara, Ángel Luis “Causality of the pandemic, quality of the catastrophe”, Eldiario.es, March 29, 2020. Available at: https://www.eldiario.es/interferencias/Causalidad-pandemia-cualidad-catastrofe_6_1010758925.html
[14] Interview with Jason W. Moore, “From the Capitalocene to a new ontological politics”, Political Ecology, July 10, 2017. Available at: https://www.ecologiapolitica.info/?p=9795
[15] I recover this notion from Amaia Pérez Orozco, BBVAh: the white, bourgeois, male, adult, and heterosexual subject.
[+] Thinking about the pandemic
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