Paper short abstract:

As from the start of the outbreak in Guinea, Ebola Treatment Units appeared as self-evidence. In unpacking the obviousness of the camp model, we want to interrogate its genealogies both within and outside of Ebola history and answer following questions: What are its products? What does it creates?

Paper long abstract:

Ebola treatment units (ETUs) have been at the forefront of the epidemic in West Africa. This "kit" produced by MSF imposed itself over other ways to handle the epidemic. Compared to the HIV approach, the camp marks a return to classical public health approaches to infectious diseases that relies on isolation. The edge of the epidemic being over, it is about time to reflect on the questions raised by camps but which were largely kept quiet because of the emergency context.

ETUs are places where citizens come to experience the "bare life". Inside the camps, they loose freedom over their biological and social life. In this sense, ETUs constitute states of exception where individuals are reduced to contaminated bodies that have to be removed from society. Citizens are also encouraged by massive campaigns to give up "suspect" parents or neighbors to public authorities as a way of "loving" and "protecting" the Nation. Consequently, contamination with Ebola equates with a loss of a "right to have rights" in society. Public efforts to protect the population whilst at the same time, detaining people in exceptional sites of treatment, sheds light on novel conjugations of "biopolitics" and "necropolitics".

Drawing on ethnographic data collected inside Guéckédou and Wonkifong ETUs in Guinea, we want to interrogate the camp model genealogies both within and outside of Ebola history - ETU as state of exception: from the refugee camp to the concentration camp - and answer the following questions: What are ETUs products? What do they create?