Microbial Resolution: Visualization and Security in the War against Emerging Microbes

The emergence of new diseases and the resurgence of old ones in the late 1980s led to the development of the concept of the "emerging microbe" and a new focus on national security against biological risks. Gloria Chan-Sook Kim's book Microbial Resolution explores how microbial futures were transformed into objects of global science and security through data mining, animal-tracking technologies, media networks, computer-modeled futures, and global ecologies and infrastructures. She develops a theory of "microbial resolution" to analyze the problematic of perceiving and governing in the present when dealing with these entities. The book opens up the paradoxes, irreconcilabilities, and failures inherent in this project and demonstrates how these tensions profoundly animate twenty-first-century epistemologies, aesthetics, affects, and ecologies.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 08 July 2024
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

An interdisciplinary study charting the war against microbial futures leads to a new theory of contemporary vision and visuality. In 1989, a group of U.S. government scientists met to discuss surprising findings: new diseases were appearing around the world, and viruses that they thought long vanquished were resurfacing. Their appearance heralded a future perpetually threatened by unforeseeable biological risks, sparking a new concept of disease: the "emerging microbe." With the Cold War nearing its end, American scientists and security experts turned to confront this new "enemy," redirecting national security against its risky horizons. In order to be fought, emerging microbes first needed to be made perceptible; but how could something immaterial, unknowable, and ever mutating be coaxed into visibility, knowability, and operability?   Microbial Resolution charts the U.S.-led war on the emerging microbe to show how their uncertain futures were transformed into objects of global science and security. Moving beyond familiar accounts that link scientific knowledge production to optical practices of visualizing the invisible, Gloria Chan-Sook Kim develops a theory of "microbial resolution" to analyze the complex problematic that arises when dealing with these entities: what can be seen when there is nothing to see? Through a syncretic analysis of data mining, animal-tracking technologies, media networks, computer-modeled futures, and global ecologies and infrastructures, she shows how a visual impasse—the impossibility of seeing microbial futures—forms the basis for new modes of perceiving, knowing, and governing in the present.   Timely and thought-provoking, Microbial Resolution opens up the rich paradoxes, irreconcilabilities, and failures inherent in the war against microbial futures. It challenges us to rethink our assumptions about the nature of knowledge, power, and the future, and to consider the ethical and political implications of our current practices of visualizing and governing the world.

Weight: 320g
Dimension: 139 x 216 x 17 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781517911706