閱讀筆記: PANDEMIC!
Perhaps an epidemic which threatens to decimate humanity should be treated as Well’s story turned around: the “Martian invaders” ruthlessly exploiting and destroying life on earth are we, humanity, ourselves; and after all devices of highly developed primates to defend themselves from us have failed, we are now threatened “by the humblest thing that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth,” stupid virus which just blindly reproduce themselves – and mutate (13).

The really difficult thing to accept is the fact that the ongoing epidemic is a result of natural contingency at its purest, that is just happened and hides no deeper meaning. In the larger order of things, we are just a species with no special importance (14).

In the last days, we hear repeatedly that each of us is personally responsible and has to follow the new rules. Media are full of stories about people who misbehaved and put themselves and others in danger, an infected man enters a store and coughs on everyone, that sort of thing. The problem with this is the same as the journalism dealing with the environmental crisis: the media over-emphasize our personal responsibility for the problem, demanding that we pay more attention to recycling and other behavioral issues. Such a focus on individual responsibility, necessary as it is to some degree, functions as ideology the moment it serves to obfuscate the bigger questions of how to change our entire economic and social system. The struggle against coronavirus can only be fought together with the struggle against ideological mystification, and as part of a general ecological struggle (88-89).

There is a key difference between the coronavirus epidemic and the ecological crisis. In the health crisis, it may be true that humans as a whole are “fighting” against – even if they have no interest in us and go their way from throat to throat killing us without meaning to it (111-112).

Materiality, usually conceived as inert substance, should be rethought as a plethora of things that from assemblages of human and nonhuman actors (actants)-humans are but one force in a potentially unbounded network of forces (113).

★ The coronavirus epidemic can be seen as an assemblage of a (potentially) pathogenic viral mechanism, industrialized, agriculture, fast global economic development, cultural habits, exploding internal communication, and so on. The epidemic is a mixture in which natural, economic, and cultural processes are inextricably bound together . . . as humans, we are one among the actants in a complex assemblage; however, it is only and precisely as subjects that we are able to adopt the “inhuman view” from which we are (partially, at least) grasp the assemblage of which we are part” 117).

#Opinion by Tsai Wen-hsuan 蔡文軒｜"At such a critical political juncture, Ant Group’s power might have made the CCP uneasy. After all, Jack Ma’s group has the means of a nation. To Xin Jinping, the existence of such a powerful plutocrat in mainland China is exactly what the Chinese saying “How can others be allowed to slumber on the side of his Majesty’s bed” is about. What is more, as Jack Ma and Jiang’s faction are inextricably intertwined, a thriving Ant Group will pose a threat to Xi. The crackdown on Ant Group might seem to be related to financial policies. However, if looked at from the perspective of political struggle in the upper echelons of the CCP, it is more likely to be a continuation of the struggle between Xi and Jiang."

Read more: https://bit.ly/2ZRQO6d

"在這個政治關鍵的截點，螞蟻集團的勢力或許已經讓中共忌憚，畢竟馬雲集團富可敵國，在中國內地有一個這麼強大的財閥，對於習來說，臥榻之側，豈容他人酣睡。更甚者，馬雲與江派有千絲萬縷的關係，這使得螞蟻集團的茁壯，將成為習的威脅。螞蟻集團被整肅事件的本質，看似與金融政策相關，但從中共上層權力鬥爭的角度來看，它更是一場習、江較勁的延續。"
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