1 On Non-Coherence John Law Centre for Science Studies Lancaster University

2 Burnside Farm Discovered 19 th February, 2001 Spread through sheep into the market system 70 premises National epidemic 2030 infected premises £3bn cleanup costs

3 FMD 31 st March

4 Introduction … 1.Messy: patchwork of practices 2.Difficult to narrate! 3.Political: stories perform realities/politics (innocence!?) 4.Question: what reality to make? … ontological politics

5 Outline 1.Two smooth summary stories: –Globalisation –foot & mouth UK 2.Commentary on literary & political work being done here 3.Patch in other stories to disrupt smoothness (a pinboard) 4.Conclusion: about ontological politics, story-telling, mess!

6 Story 1: Global Narrative

7 FMD Clinical Symptoms What is it? Productivity

8 ‘The capacity of buffalo herds to work during rice planting is halved, and milk yields decrease by 80%. When endemic, infections often occur serially with some herds falling ill three times a year. The livelihoods of families that depend on animals for food and power can be severely affected., Bangladesh….

9 FMD World Map

10 FMD World Map 2003

11 Why is this important?

12 OIE Classification 1.disease free without (routine) vaccination; 2.disease free with vaccination 3.disease endemic Potentially disastrous for exporting countries At the same time, it spreads

13 Pan Asia O Serotype, 1990

14 Pan Asia O Serotype, 1995

15 Pan Asia O Serotype, 1998

16 Pan Asia O Serotype, 2001

17 Narratives & Performativity 1.Stories order the world (not simply descriptions) 2.Our stories order the world (performativity) 3.Our stories aren’t politically innocent (we are making a difference: no choice; strengthening/weakening realities) 4.What reality to help to make more real? (= ‘ontological politics’)

18 Global FMD Narrative makes … 1.Geographical & geopolitical reality 2.Boundary between disease & disease-free countries 3.Boundary between productive/less productive agriculture 4.Powerful WTO rules

19 My Global FMD Narrative makes smooth reality …. 1.Single global space 2.Single time 3.Single objects in time and space 4.Makes some events/actors important and others not 5.Describes a system of exclusions/ vulnerabilities within that time/spae

20 Good, fine, true, but is this what we want to do? Criticism? Does it re-perform the conditions that frame dominance?

21 Story 2: UK National Narrative

22 The strategy? 1.Stop the animal movements 2.Kill infected animals and kill them 3.Trace and kill animals in contact 4.Disinfect the premises 5.Take biosecurity measures close by

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25 FMD Disinfectant

26 FMD Stonehenge

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28 F&M Pyre

29 Headline

30 FMD: the Army

31 FMD Great Orton

32 Opening the Countryside

33 National FMD Narrative 1.Discovery and Initial Strategy 2.Mounting Crisis 3.Fight back 4.Endgame

34 National FMD Narrative Assumptions 1.Space-time box, linear & progressive time (UK state apparatus) 2.Events/actors in box 3.Importance of actors 4.Discretionary agency for the state

35 National FMD Narrative 1.Specific 2.Makes strategic, state-centred struggle 3.Makes disease fit for policy makers Alternative narratives? Is this what we should be doing?

36 Smooth stories 1.Single worlds? 2.Or non-coherent worlds? Practically: lots of things didn’t fit anyway Which (do we want to enact? Performativity! Ontological politics!

37 Metaphors/techniques to break up grand narrative: to perform something different?

38 Possibilities … Museum collections Art exhibitions Elements in a landscape The rooms in a house Images streaming across a screen Multiple computer windows

39 Possibilities … Blogs Web-pages Meetings Poetry, performance Think imaginatively about mess! On this occasion: a messy pinboard!

40 FMD Pinboard

41 Looking for other narratives … … important in other locations

42 Story 3: A trading narrative?

43 The buzz had gone ‘The buzz had gone … snuffed out like a candle – the mart’s car parks (were) empty of farmers and their vehicles … the rings (were) empty of auctioneers and their vendors and buyers together with the livestock they were trading, the offices (were) empty of clerks and their customers …’

44 Livestock Market, Abergavenny

45 Trading FMD is social isolation, loss of income Space: network of contacts Time: a weekly cycle

46 Story 4: A farming narrative?

47 Families tended to become confined ‘… families tended to become confined. Children were sent to stay away or kept off school. Diversified off farm businesses were closed or kept in operation by the ‘away posting’ of one member of the family. Visits to family, friends or social venues virtually came to a standstill.’

48 Farming FMD: social isolation, fear Space: network of social contacts Time: cyclic, daily, weekly, monthly

49 Story 5: Killing?

50 But don’t get me wrong… ‘But don’t get me wrong I have now seen plenty of this plague And it is no common cold. The animals suffer horribly, as the skin of their tongues peels off And their feet fall apart. We must try to kill them quick and clean, As soon as it appears in a herd or a flock.’

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52 Killing FMD: clinical attitude Space/time: embodied skills, love, detachment, local care and killing

53 Story 6: burning?

54 Burning ‘The flames turned the night sky orange, the stench of burning flesh – no wonder the talk in the country is of apocalypse’ ‘It is, to be sure, a mediaeval image, those piles of animal corpses being put to the flame – the pictures in the papers looking more and more like tapestries than photographs.’ (Guardian)

55 FMD Pyre

56 FMD Pyre

57 Burning FMD: mediaeval sacrifice, pestilence Space: collapses into the pyres at the end of the world Time: ending, apocalypse, expression of fate, moment of judgement

58 Story 7: farming silence?

59 Mornings came and days went by ‘Mornings came and days went by without the need to think of animals being fed, or checked for lameness or looking poorly. We had a silence around us, a dog with no work. Hay silage and straw with nothing to feed or bed. ’

60 Silence

61 Silence FMD: has killed the farm Space/time: locally embodied, daily, inseparable from material context, mundane absences

62 Story 8: A story of walking and spirituality

63 Few … have looked ‘Few … (commentators) have looked at what I can only call the spiritual consequences. For hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, [walking] is an escape from regimentation. They have lost the right to roam. They are being told that the slaughter of … sheep will transform the open [hills] of the Lake District into a scrubland no one who has loved Wordsworth … will recognise …’

64 Walking

65 Walking FMD: bodily and spiritual constraint Space: openness, freedom, Time: disappears, (timeless appreciation of nature, spiritual communion)

66 Eight patches on the pinboard Globalisation Government strategies and policies The market Isolation on the farm Veterinary Care Burning Silence on the farm Walking

67 Eight kinds of space & time Globalinternational trading movements Statenation progressive Marketlocal networks cyclic Farm social relations cyclic Vetembodied momentary Pyreend of space end of time Walkingno limitsoutside time

68 Concluding… Narratives tell differently Narratives also enact differently Do we want FMD singular? Or FMD multiple? FMD as a set of interferences between enactments FMD instability, fluidity, otherness (like ALD)

69 …. Ontological politics (style and choice of narrative): what kind of a world to make? Responsibility!

70 Method? Reality enacting as incredibly difficult! (holding materials, audiences together, circulating, including) FMD smooth or FMD mess? Don’t we need a messy method to understand/enact mess?

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