TY - JOUR
T1 - Feral Biopolitics
T2 - Animal Bodies and/as Border Technologies
AU - Yoon, Hyaesin
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - This article explores how technological interventions into animal bodies refigure the borders of political community, in assemblage with sexuality, race, nation, and species. To this end, the article reconceptualizes “feral” as a biopolitical figure that unsettles categorical divisions such as culture/nature, domestic/wild, and belonging/exclusion. Alongside the theoretical development of “feral,” I extend the discussion to two sites: the use of long-tail macaques for bio-defense research in the post-9/11 United States (in connection to the feralization of the species in Mauritius) and the transspecies intimacy and feral violence/justice in the South Korean film Howling. This article pursues two overarching questions. First, how do such biopolitical operations implicate the biomedical and biotechnological interventions into these animals? And second, what kind of feral affects and trajectories emerge from these events at the intersections of species, race, sexuality, and nation? I argue that the feral as a biopolitical concept helps us to engage with the dynamics between the capturing biopower and the escaping bodies in the contemporary biopolitical landscape.
AB - This article explores how technological interventions into animal bodies refigure the borders of political community, in assemblage with sexuality, race, nation, and species. To this end, the article reconceptualizes “feral” as a biopolitical figure that unsettles categorical divisions such as culture/nature, domestic/wild, and belonging/exclusion. Alongside the theoretical development of “feral,” I extend the discussion to two sites: the use of long-tail macaques for bio-defense research in the post-9/11 United States (in connection to the feralization of the species in Mauritius) and the transspecies intimacy and feral violence/justice in the South Korean film Howling. This article pursues two overarching questions. First, how do such biopolitical operations implicate the biomedical and biotechnological interventions into these animals? And second, what kind of feral affects and trajectories emerge from these events at the intersections of species, race, sexuality, and nation? I argue that the feral as a biopolitical concept helps us to engage with the dynamics between the capturing biopower and the escaping bodies in the contemporary biopolitical landscape.
KW - Biopolitics
KW - Border technology
KW - Feral
KW - Immunity
KW - Transspecies
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85019377315&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/0969725X.2017.1322829
DO - 10.1080/0969725X.2017.1322829
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85019377315
SN - 0969-725X
VL - 22
SP - 135
EP - 150
JO - Angelaki - Journal of the Theoretical Humanities
JF - Angelaki - Journal of the Theoretical Humanities
IS - 2
ER -