Microbial Geopolitics: Living with Danger and the Future of Security

Abstract

Taking its departure in a global intensification of infectious diseases, this dissertation tracks the geopolitical effects of microbial conduct to see what a microbial perspective on international relations can teach us about threat and security. Through analyses of biological weapons, microbial bordering, childhood malnutrition, and antibiotic resistance, I conclude that dominant security strategies of risk elimination, and especially the flawed premises of human mastery that these security logics rely on, carry significant dangers of their own. How can international security be informed by an acknowledgement that humans are unable to control their environments? Following my new materialist commitment, I suggest new affirmative security politics of diversity and nurturing that require new relationships to risk and danger, and also find myself forced to reflect on how best to affirm life and death while accepting that microbes will not save us all, and that we have never been sovereign over the mutational character of biology itself.