Eben Kirksey: "Making Merit With Viral Theory in Thailand"

ABSTRACT: 

Viruses have lurked on the margins of cultural theory ever since Deleuze and Guattari suggested that “our viruses make us form a rhizome with other creatures.” Long before the internet was a thing, Jean Baudrillard described television as a “viral, endemic, chronic, alarming presence.”  The probiotic turn in multispecies studies and the environmental humanities has influenced more recent theoretical work related to viral politics and the symbiotic potential of infectious agents. This work in progress talk will deploy emergent concepts related to viral theory to understand the contact zones of northern Thailand where bats, cats, tourists, monks, and multiple species of viruses meet. At Thai Buddhist temples in caves where diverse kinds of coronaviruses are found monks are making merit by chanting, meditating, and helping with everyday labor like temple maintenance. As new knowledge emerges about viruses in these spaces, some monks are developing new approaches to making merit—they…