I feel unusual. I think we should go outside.

In honor of M.I.A.'s absurdly badass new song, I offer my essay about bird flu written in Nov. '05...

Xenophobia Airborne: The Bird Flu

Why has the bird flu virus only in the last month become the terrifying specter that we now know it to be, daily prophesied in the news? After all, the virus, along with the possibility that it could become transmissible from person to person and thus spark a catastrophic epidemic, has been around for several years. One possible explanation for the sudden jolt of interest in this disease might be found in a recent paradigm shift in Western paranoia in from culture to nature, a transformation that began with the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia and recently solidified as a phenomenon with several devastating Caribbean hurricanes and the Kashmir earthquake. It is a change in focus that has supplanted our obsession with global terrorism in favor of more imposing weapons of mass destruction: the various nightmarish potentialities of what the natural world is capable of dishing out. Yet it is only in the bird flu pandemic scenario that the hidden cultural anxieties buried within this explicit fear of nature are fully played out.
Who do disasters happen to? Naturally the answer to this question depends on who you are; for many, the answer is “me.” For most Americans, however, disasters happen to other people. They happen “over there.” But, the natural objection goes, what about New Orleans? Surely this disaster happened to people “just like you and I,” i.e. other developed-world citizens, those most “innocent” of victims. But then again, who really suffered in New Orleans? Was it not in fact an underclass who otherwise go unnoticed, denied, invisible, in the developing world—the Other within the Us? The developing world’s subaltern class, only visible as either victims or perpetrators of destruction and violence (as is currently on vivid display in France and Belgium)? Whether Americans want to admit it or not, even the tragic events of Hurricane Katrina were distant enough for them to remain alien, far enough away. What was too close to home, however, was the obvious incompetence of the government in helping the most needy victims of the disaster. The anxiety produced by this display of outrageous ineptitude remained free-floating, waiting for some future possibility to attach itself to. Terrorism would have been a logical destination, but after four years of countless alerts and little domestic action, Americans have been completely desensitized to the threat of terrorist attacks, particularly large-scale actions such as 9/11. The next act of terrorism on American soil is likely to be in a city, and likely to be a localized attack on easily accessible transportation—trains, buses and the like. While this remains of grave concern to those who live in major cities, it has nothing on the bird flu.
The bird flu means no escape. Nowhere will be safe. In almost no time, the “over there” would be over here. Like the 1918 virus, it could spread to every corner of the globe. Quarantines would likely prove ineffective; no more safety in not living in a city, no more gawking at urban catastrophe from a comfortable distance. Now, even more so than during Katrina, the "Other" would locate itself literally, physically within "Us"—we and those poor third-world victims would be one and the same. In addition, the hopelessness of our contemporary state would be exposed (at the current moment we are embarrassingly unprepared for such a disaster)—“their” state, the seemingly dysfunctional governments and services, “their” corruption, “their” neglect for their citizens, would be finally and utterly revealed as our own (as it has already been revealed with Katrina). Terror at the prospect of the bird flu is terror at the rapidly collapsing distance between there and here; it is the blurring of categories, a world without definition or boundary (as the disease would in fact use the very capitalist flows of the globalized world to spread). In such a way, we witness the eclipse of the developed by the developing world—it is already here, whether the bird flu comes or not; the media has already mirrored our fears back to us. Nature thus triumphs over culture, indeed over cultural difference proper. With our biological safety goes our the safety of our categories, our identity; there is no more pride, no more relief in being “here” where all is so much better. At last, everywhere is simply the world: equal and unending catastrophe.