Datum
03. Oktober 2025
Online Lecture
Eben Kirksey: „Viruses Make Us Think”
Friday, October 3, 2025, 12:00 – 1:30 pm (Pacific Time)
Creatures throughout the animal kingdom—from mice, to insects, to humans—use viral particles in their brains to transmit information among nerve cells. Viral infections are integral in long-term memory formation. Over half of the human genome is viral in origin, and biologists are just starting to understand how ancient infections have shaped the human condition. Before the role of viruses in memory formation was understood, Donna Haraway marveled at a “coordinated symphony” of human cells and microbes which work together to “make the conscious me possible.” Building on Haraway’s provocative claim “we have never been human,” I suggest: “we have always been viral.” This talk will consider a number of interrelated questions: Can viruses think? Are they even alive? Is human consciousness a hybrid multispecies coproduction?
Eben Kirksey is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oxford where he teaches Medical Anthropology and Human Ecology. He earned his PhD at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and helped found one of the world’s first Environmental Humanities programs at UNSW Sydney in Australia. Eben is perhaps best known for his work in multispecies ethnography. Duke University Press published his first two books–Freedom in Entangled Worlds (2012) and Emergent Ecologies (2015)–as well as two edited collections The Multispecies Salon (2014) and The Promise of Multispecies Justice (2022). St. Martin’s Press published The Mutant Project (2020), a book that follows some of the world’s first genetically modified people.
More details and links to Eben’s publications are on-line: https://eben-kirksey.space/
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