Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes to examine the „violence of speed“ put forth by the philosopher Paul Virilio in developing a critical ethnography of global health. I will ask how humanitarian logistics prompts a set of technologies of speed which organize emergencies logistically

Paper long abstract:

This paper proposes to examine the "violence of speed" put forth by the philosopher Paul Virilio in developing a critical ethnography of global health (Virilio 2006; see also Rosa 1999). Taking a cue from Virilio's account of logistics in the make of modern war and peace, I will ask how humanitarian logistics prompts a set of technologies of speed which organize emergencies logistically. In the field of global health, logistics is increasingly a precondition for innovations and itself a ecology of creating innovation. Not only to transport things to any place, but continuously optimize logistical time for creating complex infrastructures to scale-up access to antiretrovirals or transport tons of material to construct Ebola treatment centers. The moral authority to act immediately is a powerful legitimation for global health interventions. In this paper I wish to engage anthropological debates on the biopolitical implications of global health interventions by examining the violence of speed resulting out of humanitarian logistics. This violence of speed will be captured by asking how humanitarian logistics enacts its populations to be saved. How are beginning and end of an epidemic defined? How is the race for global health shaping the biopolitics of making life and letting die? To situate the analysis of violence of speed, I will review medical anthropological debates on violence (e.g. Farmer 2004; McFalls 2010) and elaborate on the invisibility of the violence of speed to contribute to efforts to reclaim critique in the anthropology of global health (e.g. Adams, Burke, Whitmarsh 2014).