Who Owns a Deadly Virus? Viral Sovereignty, Global Health Emergencies, and the Matrix of the International

Abstract This article investigates the global inequities imbricated in international response to lethal viruses. It does so by developing a virographic approach study of relations that builds upon matrix methods pioneered within black feminist thought for unraveling particularly complex forms interlocking oppression. Performing such virography exposes multifaceted economic, racial, and epistemological disparities embedded management emergent further demonstrates how those multiple axes inequality intersect during viral outbreaks form deadly subjugation—vital abandonment—that repeatedly deprives world's majority population from equitable access life-saving biomedical interventions. finally also reveals diplomatic assertions sovereignty, is, claiming legal ownership pathogens, are directly enrolling viruses now political strategies countries seeking resist their vital abandonment. Overall, thus contributes broader foregrounding salience epidemiological injustices positionalities, capturing actant power contemporary world politics, intimating “international” can itself be studied as continually reconfiguring historically conditioned inequities.