Concocting Viral Apocalypse: Catastrophic Risk and the Production of Bio(in)security

Abstract

The post-9/11 era featured an unprecedented expansion of global biodefense initiatives. This essay chronicles the rise of biodefense by tracking biological risk construction across political, scientific, and cultural rhetoric from the late 1990s to the present. It maintains that the production of bio(in)security entails two interlocking rhetorical operations—framing biological threats as catastrophic risk and enlisting the specter of viral apocalypse—that license technological solutions to imagined vulnerabilities. The essay concludes by considering the implications of such rhetoric for public health and national security.

Keywords:

• Biodefense
• Bioterrorism
• Catastrophic Risk
• National Security
• Public Health
• Viral Apocalypse

Acknowledgments

She wishes to thank editor Brian L. Ott and her anonymous reviewers, the Front Range Rhetoric Reading Group (especially Sonja Foss, Stephen John Hartnett, Hamilton Bean, and Greg Dickinson), Michael Zimmerman, and members of the Rhetoric Workshop at the University of Colorado at Boulder for feedback on various iterations of this essay. A version of this work was presented at a Department of Communication colloquium at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign on April 21, 2011—thanks to Cara Finnegan, Kent Ono, and colleagues for their intellectual energy. The author also appreciates Kirstin Runa's and Jennifer Malkowski's research assistance.

Notes

I need to acknowledge that the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program of 1992 included biological weapons among its nuclear and chemical weapons threat reduction plans, highlighting the security concerns that arose following the demise of the Soviet Union.

The terms biosecurity and biodefense are sometimes used synonymously, although there are debates about what the terms do and should designate. Although some scholars argue that biosecurity is a broader term, I am using them interchangeably in this essay.

Although some biological weapons agents are bacterial, the term viral in viral apocalypse signifies the communicability of disease agents and indexes the reinvigorated fascination with viruses that emerged out of the 1990s.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa Keränen

Lisa Keränen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver.