Bordering practices have been a central and controversial feature of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Closed borders, lockdowns, and restrictions on movement and individual “freedoms” have revived concepts of the biopolitical “state of exception” and state control. In this article, we argue that biopolitical critiques of responses to the pandemic fail to grasp the opportunity to rethink worldmaking and instead base their critiques on a desired “return to normal” which foregrounds human-centric individualism at the expense of alternative worldmaking that accounts for the more-than-human. To do so, we bring the virus and the virome into our discussion to rethink bordering practices and how the SARS-CoV-2 virus affects bodies, worlds, and politics. We focus primarily on the Australian case, where the pandemic response began with lockdowns and then gave way to a militarized and individualistic approach. Responses to the pandemic have failed to produce a reimagining of human and more-than-human relations. Opportunities for ethical engagement have been missed, resulting in limited responses that stem from the failure of state capacity and entrenched modes of inequality that are harmful to vulnerable others, both human and more-than-human. This requires an ontological reframing of how we relate to a complex world from a more-than-human perspective.

中文翻译：

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病毒式身体政治的教训：边界和超越人类的世界创造的可能性


边境做法一直是 SARS-CoV-2 大流行的一个核心且有争议的特征。关闭边境、封锁以及对行动和个人“自由”的限制使生物政治“例外状态”和国家控制的概念重新焕发活力。在本文中，我们认为对大流行病应对措施的生物政治批评未能抓住重新思考世界构建的机会，而是将他们的批评建立在理想的“回归常态”之上，这种理念突出了以人为中心的个人主义，而牺牲了超越人类的替代性世界构建。为此，我们将病毒和病毒组纳入我们的讨论，以重新思考边界实践以及 SARS-CoV-2 病毒如何影响身体、世界和政治。我们主要关注澳大利亚的案例，那里的大流行应对措施从封锁开始，然后让位于军事化和个人主义的方法。对大流行病的应对措施未能重新构想人际关系和超越人际关系。道德参与的机会被错过了，导致由于国家能力的失败和根深蒂固的不平等模式而产生的反应有限，这些不平等模式对弱势群体（包括人类和非人类）有害。这需要从超越人类的角度对我们如何与复杂世界建立联系进行本体论重构。