Viral Wave: Surfing in Co-inspirations with Plants
The health emergency awakened upon the arrival of COVID-19 virality reified a public health which traces the hard lines of bodies perceived as discrete entities to defend one from the other. From our experiences of (de)confinement in Quebec and in previous and actual fieldwork with healers and vegetal medicines in Cameroon and Colombia, we are here interested in the relations left behind in such a biomedical matrix, namely those transversal biosocial affective ecologies linked to intimate and contagious copresence. To these ends, a deleuzoguattarian anthropological approach enables to think both the striated space of biopower and the smooth space of affective movements and flux of the “viral wave”, respectively the cadenced and measurable rhythms and the rhythms without measure of the ways of connecting to the wave, even through immunological constrictions. We address the question of vegetal breathing more specifically in a world of more or less viable relational, aerial and sonorous assemblages. The goal is to maintain balance in the in-between enabling to deal with the open and the closed in a flexible rather than in a rigid manner, without losing sight of what or who is manifesting themselves. Navigating or rather riding the cusp of the wave ever on the point of breaking, we thus aim to surpass the usual scientific positioning of striation while co-inspiring with the vegetal in (de) confinement. Our discussion in minor or anexact science aims to remain close to the ways in cohabiting with viralities while taking into account the vital aspect of contagion.