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Special Issue: Queer Immunities/Immunologies, Queer Virology
Sexualities
2024, Vol. 0(0) 1–6
journals.sagepub.com/home/sex
Book Review
Bishnupriya Ghosh (2023) The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 304 pp, ISBN: 9781478019213 (paperback)
Already at the very outset in the introduction of this dense and highly informative book,
Ghosh highlights the fact that considering our bodies as a singular entity is an illusion,
given that, for example, microbial cells outnumber human cells ten to one. With this
introduction to the human microbiome, Ghosh moves on to set out that her book is
devoted to how the extreme situation of the global COVID-19 pandemic compelled a
‘[…] recalibration of multispecies politics.’(2) Moreover, for Ghosh, making sense of
emerging infectious disease, or EID, events, cannot be accomplished without taking into
account multispecies relations, which consistently surface as ‘[…] organizing nodes for
plotting targeted interventions into individual bodies, populations, and disease milieus.’
(2) On a more fundamental level, multispecies relations are crucial since, as Ghosh argues,
models suggest that ‘[…] 60.3% of EIDs are zoonotic; among these, 71.3% originate from
wildlife.’(163)
Ghosh’s analysis, situated within scholarship that is concerned with the intersection of
medical humanities and media studies, amongst other things, such as the work of Lisa
Cartwright (1995) and Kristen Ostherr (2013)
1
- focuses on ‘epidemic media’, or the
technical mediation through which infection is made legible, and she studies epidemic
media across epistemic settings such as laboratories, clinics and forests, to understand
how they ‘[…] actualize multispecies relations so as to measure, assess, and locate harms.’
(2) Further, for Ghosh, epidemic media within the context of her book is ‘[…] a capacious
rubric for much more than the proverbial contagion fare of films and television shows,
pulp fiction, and literary works.’(8) Ghosh’s study of epidemic media “[…] attends to life
unfolding as process-relational ontologies, to life as always becoming.”(8–9) For Ghosh,
there is also a contingent element to epidemic media, given that they are dealing with
detecting and composing a novel multispecies relations, ones that are necessarily
composed by lively materialities. As she argues,
‘When the effort is to detect and compose a novel multispecies relation, the repre-
sentation is necessarily, and often explicitly, conjectural or speculative. Machinic in-
scriptions often run up against accelerating viral changes (mutations becoming variants,
for example) or the new complexities of multicellular organization (which of ‘our’
proteins help the viral spike protein to fuse to “our”cells)’. (13)
Moreover, not all lively materialities are always, strictly speaking, biological processes
such as the ones just mentioned. As Ghosh puts it,
“Sometimes liveliness registers as disruptive excesses, as strong affects. An animal
spotting a camera trap alters its route and subsequently dislodges the camera; a vital
medium poses haptic danger despite controlled safety precautions. Too much noise or
disturbance, error or redundancy, scuttles efforts at efficient machinic capture. These
differential agencies, animal or machinic, underwrite the speculative orientation of ep-
idemic media’s biotechnical forms.”(13)
Moreover, epidemic media are ‘[…] processes of mediation that render multispecies
relationalities sensible so as to manage them during, or even better, before the next
epidemic. These media materialize in scientific practices, artistic compositions, and
activist inscriptions.’(28) Mobilizing objects such as viruses and hosts, Ghosh explains,
epidemic media set in motion research agendas, institutional action, and public policy.
The reflexive, open-ended nature of epidemic media, given their breadth, contingent, and
conjectural nature, is, however, tempered by a specific goal: the need to ‘[…] produce
biotechnological or biomedical solutions to stem host losses.’(27)
Ghosh further asks how exactly epistemic media inscribe infection, or what epistemic
objects enable targeted interventions into changing multispecies relations. Here, Ghosh
begins by answering that one might begin with epidemic media as ‘[…] enactments of
epistemic cuts in dynamic multispecies assemblies. There is mastery in the mediatic
objectification of one multispecies relation plucked out from the living processes and
relations of the biological churn.’(3; emphasis in the original). Ghosh casts suspicion at
the manner in which epidemic media have functioned, considering it myopic: ‘[…] their
material construction of epistemic objects extracts and isolates biological targets from
processes and relations, then compounds the problem by iteratively folding those targets
into problem-solving exercises aimed at producing viable industrial solutions.’(27)
Pesticides and antibiotics that ‘[…] have generated microbial drug resistance and can-
cerous conditions’(27) are historical evidence of the problem of this approach. Epidemic
media can also serve to possibly recast this myopic view that ‘[…] ends in a biotech-
nological fix (in vaccines and drugs)’(27), to take a more holistic approach that en-
compasses our multispecies entanglements, and which also takes into account our ‘[…]
precarious life in a precarious planet.’(27). Ghosh does not appear to be throwing the
baby out with the bathwater, here. She does not seem to be arguing that biotechnological
fixes are to be entirely dismissed –but rather, that they themselves have limitations, given
that ‘[…] biological processes outpace machinic capture even as “we”race to modify a
new multispecies relation.’(27). Ghosh also argues that one needs to learn to accept the
inherent precariousness and unpredictability of life itself. As she puts it,
‘[…] even though we’d rather turn our backs on pathogenic germs, exterminating them
when we can, we have no option but to emerge with them. The radical uncertainty of new
pathogenic emergences just reinforces the issue […] Epidemic histories tell us it is not
always possible to calculate all outcomes to life’s unfoldings.’(27 –28; emphasis in the
original)
Ghosh further contends that a more comprehensive approach needs to be adopted that
locates microbes, and individual bodies, within their larger context, and social and
2Sexualities 0(0)
environmental backgrounds. The intentional politics of the book are, as Ghosh argues,
characterized by a ‘multispecies politics of health.’(29) Within this multispecies politics
of health, which recognizes our relations with other species and environments, non-
human animal and ecosystem health cannot be ignored. Ghosh’s arguments are also
presented within a setting that firmly understands colonial dispossession, amongst other
things, as central to understanding infectious disease emergence. This historical context
also has ongoing effects, with infectious diseases being ‘[…] deadlier for those living with
generational, often deepening harms. In tracking uneven socioeconomic distributions of
health, the colonial sphere continues to haunt the biosphere.’(39). Opening our eyes to the
historical context of infectious disease emergences allows us, as Ghosh argues, to recast
epidemics as biological, social, and ecological crises.
Chapter 3 is one of the most interesting chapters in the book, and focuses on the clinical
translations of blood. During the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s, blood was made ‘[…]
public as an interior milieu under attack that was equally a medium recalcitrant to
containment at the epidermal limits of the molar body.’(114) In this chapter, Ghosh traces
processes of mediation that materialize blood in biotechnical spatial forms composed as
interior milieus. Ghosh characterizes these intensive time-spaces read for their multi-
species distributions as ‘biotechnical milieus’(114), and further probes their ecological
and social dimensions. Ghosh focuses on the mediatic processes that clinically translate
blood into three forms; frozen blood samples (for refrigeration), blood data (for the
database) and blood pictures (for points of clinical care). Taking volumetric and numeric
forms, these biotechnical milieus are temporally organized as serial snapshots in the blood
files. Here, blood ‘[…] is the quiet backdrop to a multispecies drama transcribed as
mathematical ratio (xparticles in ymL).’(114; emphases in the original). Following blood
beyond its original site of production, Ghosh brings to light multispecies entanglements as
social and ecological relationalities. Technical mediation puts us in communication
‘[…] with vital media bristling with multispecies signals, gesturing towards disease
milieus. What one breathes and ingests, where one lives and travels, one’s intergener-
ational vitality, all determine how infection unfolds in the intensive interior milieu.’(121).
The porousness of bodily boundaries, or rather, its inability to be divorced from its
social, cultural, and political contexts, amongst other things, is made explicit in Chapter 3.
Ghosh discusses the manner in which consequent to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s,
urgings to get tested became commonplace in American public life, as was knowledge of
how HIV was transmitted and its molecular effects. Within this backdrop in the United
States, patient-centred HIV/AIDS movements made the technical modification of blood,
in tests and therapy, a communal enterprise. In addition, Ghosh argues that blood did not
only have a symbolic function, but was also sensible insofar as in scientific and artistic
compositions, blood, as that which is internal and intimate, was externalized and given
existence outside of the body and its boundaries. As Ghosh argues, the early days of the
HIV/AIDS crisis necessitated making blood, or the interior milieu, visible and tangible in
order to push for greater awareness and action to stem the epidemic. As Ghosh puts it,
‘The interior milieu had to become perceptible as a public sensorium.’(147) Here, Ghosh
makes reference to artists like Robert Sherer and Ron Athey, who both used blood in their
artworks. For Ghosh, ‘[…] the HIV/AIDS pandemic ushered in a medicalized epoch
Special Issue: Queer Immunities/Immunologies, Queer Virology 3
sanguinis […] in which this highly politicized, excorporated substance once more came to
define social kindship.’(115; emphasis in the original)
Another highly interesting chapter is Chapter 4, which pursues epidemic media that
‘[…] detect and compose animal movement in the wild, the “living laboratories”of the
earth, to locate and identify the time-spaces of potential spillovers (160). The literature on
zoonotic spillovers has attributed them to novel interfaces between wild non-human
animal hosts and human populations, sometimes through intermediary hosts. Here, Ghosh
is suspicious of the ‘[…] implicit centering of species taxa’, since ‘[…] crafting species
difference conceived along a classificatory logic ‘[…] imposes an impossible organismic
purity.’(160) Organismic purity is a fantasy –as Ghosh highlights, animal hosts are
always already multispecies, as ‘[…] lively media for the transport of microbes, they are
always already not one species.’(161; emphasis in original). Therefore, to analyze viruses
and the complex backstory to specific EID events, one must track and sense animals in
their environments, or tracking and sensing ‘biotechnical kinesthesia’(161), in which
they further materialize that environment. Chapter 4 examines processes of technical
mediation that differentiate specific animal hosts from their environments, and these ‘[…]
mediatic processes ultimately produce the ‘multispecies kinesthetic’as the basis of
controlling EID events’(161). The multispecies kinesthetic specifically ‘[…] gestures
toward transmission as viral infection within and between species, accessed through
animal movement patterns. Disease transmission becomes intelligible as the spatial
distribution of life on earth [.] (161). More specifically, movement, or traffic, characterizes
the multispecies kinesthetic: firstly, traffic as in, microbial kinesthesia in cross-species
transmission; secondly, traffic as in the population densities that form the demarcated
areas termed an ‘environment’; third, traffic as in economic activities, from wildlife
trading to food activities that have been identified as the considerable drivers of path-
ogenic emergence; and finally, traffic as in the machinic signal transmissions of animal
movements.
Echoing a number of other works that focus on planetary health, One Health, and
multispecies relations
2
, amongst others
3
in tackling EID events, Ghosh’s most vital
contribution is her highly persuasive conveying of the importance of situating the
molecular in its larger social, cultural, historical, and political-economic milieus, and vice-
versa. Ghosh highlights, for example, the lacuna that arises when the pursuit of viral
media as media environments
‘[…] mostly relegates them to clinical scales. This is because bodily fluids (blood,
semen, saliva, vaginal/rectal secretions, respiratory mucous) have restricted circulation.
They are ontologically fragile, unable to survive long outside their site of generation.’
(120)
But as Ghosh notes –these fluid media, by-and-large, ‘[…] exceed their molar
boundaries, whether by human habits or ecosystems.’(120) The biological cannot be
disentangled from the social and the ecological and vice-versa, and further, interior
milieus are ‘[…] fractal environments mirroring unfolding processes in disease milieus
[.]’(120) Ghosh’s fundamental message seems to be the necessity of connecting the micro
to the macro, the molecular to the molar, and vice-versa. Neither can be considered in
isolation or to the exclusion of the other. To not ‘keep abreast of pandemic scatter’(209),
4Sexualities 0(0)
as Ghosh puts it, would be to our detriment when it comes to crisis events like COVID-19,
which will otherwise arrive ‘[…] every so often, demanding expensive solutions that take
decades to distribute.’(209) There is also an implicit political economic orientation to
Ghosh’s arguments, one that is highly suspect of capitalism’s ability to deliver when it
comes to ‘health’as a whole. As she argues, what all modern pandemics have shown is
that,
‘Health is not the purview of medicine alone; it must include the care of life in therapies
and wellness regimes, in housing and food security. Health cannot be left to the free
market’s vicissitudes but must become a global commons. Health cannot be constrained to
human health; it must be crosshatched with animal and ecosystem health.’(73)
To conclude, therefore, Ghosh’s book speaks to the necessity of thinking of our
imbrication within our environmental, social, cultural, political and historical milieus, and
of the inherent multispecies politics and ‘ecosystem entanglements’(167) implicated
within this context, not just in relation to health, but more broadly in terms of our everyday
lives.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Benjam´
ın Schultz-Figueroa for his helpful comments and feedback in relation to the
first draft of this review.
ORCID iD
Linda Roland Danil https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9276-9535
Notes
1. I am thankful to Benjam´
ın Schultz-Figueroa for bringing these specificworkstomy
attention.
2. Ghosh seems to conflate the notions of ‘One Health’and ‘planetary health’at certain points, such
as on page 7,but the two are not entirely the same. As de Castañeda et al. (2023) explain, for
example, animal health remains the most prominent One Health research field, whereas planetary
health research does not address animal health. Planetary health focuses more on the envi-
ronment, particularly climate change and human health, and on social determinants of human
health. Nonetheless, this is a small critique, and mainly mentioned here by way of clarification.
3. In relation to planetary health, see, for example, Vatter and Lemm, 2022;H¨
arting and Meek,
2024;Browne and Sutton, 2024. In relation to One Health, see, for example, Braverman, 2023.
References
Braverman I (ed) (2023) More-than-One Health: Humans, Animals, and the Environment Post-
COVID. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Browne J and Sutton Z (2024) Human-Animal Relationships in Times of Pandemic and Climate
Crisis: Multispecies Sociology for the New Normal. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Cartwright L (1995) Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture. Minneapolis, MI:
University of Minnesota Press.
Special Issue: Queer Immunities/Immunologies, Queer Virology 5
de Castañeda RR, Villers J, Guzm´
an CAF, et al. (2023) One Health and planetary health research:
leveraging differences to grow together. The Lancet: Planetary Health 7(2): E109–E111.
H¨
arting H and Meek H (eds) (2024) Planetary Health Humanities and Pandemics. Abingdon,
Oxon: Routledge.
Ostherr K (2013) Medical Visions: Producing the Patient through Film, Television, and Imaging
Technologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vatter M and Lemm V (eds) (2022) The Viral Politics of COVID-19: Nature, Home, and Planetary
Health. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Linda Roland Danil obtained a PhD from the School of Sociology and Social Policy at
the University of Leeds in 2015. She is presently a Visiting Researcher in the De-
partment of Surgery at the University of Cambridge.
Linda Roland Danil
University of Cambridge, UK
Email: lindarolandd@gmail.com
© The Author(s) 2024
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/13634607241285081
6Sexualities 0(0)
