Paper short abstract:

This paper describes research into the potential for using RNA viruses as a metaphor and model to better understand the role of diversity in resilience and the role of diversity in long-term existential success. It is based on a research project between a virologist and an artist.

Paper long abstract:

This paper reflects on a collborative research project between virologist and Reader in Vector Ecology at Keele University, Dr Naomi Forrester-Soto, and Assoc Prof Dr Alana Jelinek, artist and theorist of art, an inter-disciplinary researcher with social anthropologists among others (member of EASA since 2012). We are researching the potential for using RNA viruses as a metaphor and model to better understand the role of diversity in resilience and the role of diversity in long-term existential success. Critique of existing and perhaps cynical uses of 'resilience' as neoliberal panacea for structural inequalities and exploitation is avoided, we believe, when the question of resilience is reframed through the lens of diversity, which is necessarily not situated in individuals but instead in communities. We turn to the most cutting-edge knowledge about RNA virus replication to look at the question of resilience. This paper describes virus ecologies and the entanglement between viruses, their vectors and their hosts to celebrate the success of viruses, not in terms of pandemic, but in terms of the diversity and creativity at the heart of a virus's strategy to thrive and evolve. Study of RNA viruses and their reliance on diversity and creativity for replication provides potential insight into how we might support real resilience through diversity in communities of both humans and non-human species.