• Robert G. Wallace , Max Ajl ⋅ « The Bright Bulbs » ⋅ repris dans R. G. Wallace, Dead epi­de­mio­lo­gists. On the ori­gins of COVID-19, Monthly Review Press, oct. 2020 02 11 20

    The bad takes on COVID wend across the poli­ti­cal conti­nuum into the more reco­gni­zable left. Superficially more groun­ded ana­to­mies of the cri­sis have leapt atop the backs of the dead ani­mals and bro­ken land­scapes that did indeed help pro­duce the pan­de­mic. But in a clas­sic riding trick, the acro­ba­tics sud­den­ly switches mounts mid-ride to cha­rac­te­ris­ti­cal­ly Eurocentric hob­by­horses from which to herald impe­­rium-old edicts on how to live, eat, and die. Should we eat meat, with source live­stock an appa­rent dri­ver in the emer­gence of dead­ly patho­gens ? Documentarian Astra Taylor, envi­ron­men­tal his­to­rian Troy Vettese, and poli­ti­cal scien­tist Jan Dutkiewicz—TVD, for brevity’s…

  • Robert G. Wallace , Max Ajl ⋅ « The Bright Bulbs » ⋅ repris dans R. G. Wallace, Dead epi­de­mio­lo­gists. On the ori­gins of COVID-19, Monthly Review Press, oct. 2020

    Even before COVID-19 arri­ved in the United States, it was appa­rent that in deploying the virus as a pro­pa­gan­dis­tic par­ry against China, conser­va­tives and libe­rals alike would make mat­ters worse by impo­sing an oppor­tu­ni­ty cost. By crow­ding the social space with saber-rat­t­ling, the United States would fail to take notes about the out­break and China’s res­ponses pro and con—so as to make ade­quate and inter­na­tio­nal­ly tea­med pre­pa­ra­tions. Certainly it’s a bipar­ti­san mis­cal­cu­la­tion borne more out of struc­tu­ral decay than mere hubris or bad data, but the pro­blem extends across the sweep of res­pec­table poli­tics. These broa­der cultu­ral patho­lo­gies, ent­wi­ned into…

  • Robert G. Wallace , Max Ajl ⋅ « The Bright Bulbs » ⋅ repris dans R. G. Wallace, Dead epi­de­mio­lo­gists. On the ori­gins of COVID-19, Monthly Review Press, oct. 2020

    The pro­blem is a more gene­ral one, beyond this par­ti­cu­lar ter­roir. Why are so many figures on the bien pen­sant Anglophone left adop­ting anti-eco­­lo­­gi­­cal poli­tics that advo­cate tech­no­lo­gies that are as inse­pa­rable from their fun­ders as the looms were from the mill owners in the age of the Luddites ? Why are these posi­tions serial­ly plat­for­med by alle­ged­ly cri­ti­cal podia, time and again, even as their logics are sym­me­tri­cal to those under­lying efforts to force meat­pa­ckers back to COVID-infes­­ted pro­ces­sing plants, where all that labor is “saved”? There’s a through line from Trump to what counts in much of the Global…