The semiotics of security: infectious disease research and the biopolitics of informational bodies in the United States.

In this article, I investigate the biopolitical economy of security as it is operating today in the United States in the context of infectious disease research. Drawing on my work with influenza researchers, I specifically show how experts have been concerned not only with the circulation of biological matter but also with the exchange of scientific information. I argue that it is a specific logic—the logic of iterability—that is at the heart of the growing concern with “sensitive information” published in scientific journals. How has the concern with sensitive information affected infectious disease research in the United States in the past few years? How has the logic of iterability reconfigured microbiological notions of the normal and the pathological? And what might an anthropological analysis of the biopolitical economy of security be able to tell us about the ways in which “life” is made a new political concern today? NOTES Acknowledgments. My gratitude to Peter Palese, Taronna Maines, and Terrence Tumpey for making my research possible. I would also like to thank Roger Begrich, Alberto Cambrosio, Lawrence Cohen, Stephen Collier, Cori Hayden, Angie Heo, Julia Hornberger, Karine Landgren Hugentobler, Karen Jent, Evangelos Karagiannis, Frédéric Keck, Chris Kelty, Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, Andy Lakoff, Hannah Landecker, Nicolas Langlitz, Andrea Mühlebach, Elizabeth Povinelli, Paul Rabinow, Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Shalini Randeria, Peter Redfield, Tobias Rees, Anthony Stavrianakis, Miriam Ticktin, Fouzieyha Towghi, and Alexei Yurchak for helpful suggestions and generous support of my work. Thanks are owed as well to the anonymous reviewers and the editors of Cultural Anthropology, Anne Allison and Charles Piot, for their invaluable comments. Funding for this research was provided by the Swiss National Science Foundation. 1. For additional examples, see Bingham and colleagues (2008); Collier and colleagues (2004); King (2002); and Lentzos and Rose (2009). 2. Before the experiments were conducted, CDC’s Institutional Biosafety Committee reviewed the proposed research extensively. All experimental procedures were carried out in a biosafety level 3–enhanced facility, which includes controlled access, systematic decontamination as well as primary safety barriers (safety cabinets, isolation chambers, gloves, and gowns) and secondary safety barriers (special facility construction with restricted access and high-efficiency particulate air filtration) to protect the scientists and the public from accidental exposure. The enhanced procedures used for the reconstruction of the 1918 virus include additional respiratory protection, clothing changes, and personal showers prior to exiting the laboratory. All laboratory workers were also required to take antiviral prophylactics while conducting the experiments. Here, I will not provide further detailed analysis of these precautions, focusing instead on efforts to regulate and modulate the exchange of sensitive scientific information. 3. For others, see the list provided in Fink (2003). 4. See Atlas and colleagues (2003). 5. To mention just one among many other accounts, see Urban 1996. 6. See as well Das (2004). My thanks to Lawrence Cohen for bringing Veena Das’s important essay to my attention and for engaging my work on the matter of security more generally. 7. The term nomadic geography is Helmreich’s (2003:208). 8. Of equal importance for Foucault’s understanding of security was of course the physiocratic thought of the 18th century. 9. I am indebted to Hannah Landecker, who suggested these terms to me. 10. This argument presupposes that such vaccines and antiviral drugs are readily available, which might not necessarily be the case. 352 cuan_1146 can2008.cls February 22, 2012 14:0