Ardeth (Nov 2021)
Contagious Care
Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought upon an unprecedented wave of antimicrobial approaches to managing public health. As Western states dangerously flirt with antimicrobial biopolitics of control, populations begin to embody a fear of the microbial other. This commentary piece posits that healing the visible and invisible wounds left by this virus will require communities to foster more-than-antimicrobial forms of citizenry, which the author suggests might emerge from a practice of microbial co-healing. Through this perspective, people can safely and somatically exchange bodily microbes in a non-paternalistic and probiotic approach to treating and preventing illness and disease. By materialising and spatializing such a practice in the form of a Microbial Bathhouse, the author makes the case for a novel and alternative form of co-healing based off of mutual health and embodied knowledges, one which seeks to pull the world out of its current state of dysbiosis.
