(c) Omar Dewachi

Omar Dewachi

Revealed in the Wound: Iraqibacter and the Biology of History

Mousonturm

Lecture

 Bodies, Art, and Protection: Wounds

Building on ethnographic research on war wounds across the Middle East, this talk explores the rise of Iraqibacter, a “superbug” associated with the US occupation of Iraq in 2003. Tracing the histories and geographies of this superbug across the landscapes of war injury, he shows how unravelling ethnographic knowledge about antimicrobial resistance reveals deeper entanglements of this killer superbug in the political, biosocial, and environmental manifestations of long-term Western interventions and present-day conflict fallout across the region. Building on the notion of biology of history, the registration of human activity in bacterial life, Dewachi suggests that Iraqibacter could be understood as an archive of the changing ecologies and toxicities of war in Iraq and beyond.

Lecture, followed by a conversation with Hakan Topal.

Language: English

The day ticket is valid for all events within “Bodies, un-protected” on the day of validity.

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