ABSTRACT
The target of biosecurity is society. Quarantine is its limit-concept: it denotes a full suspension of society, if we consider that society is an act, a field of relations existing through their enactment. Its capacity to suspend society designates biosecurity power as absolute and self-defeating. The suspension of society empties the public sphere and negates the space for democratic politics. Instead, the household becomes the prominent social unit — and it is drastically redefined by biosecurity. Through unceasing surveillance, its privacy is cancelled; and it has no recourse to the public sphere. Both the private and the public sphere are now occupied by the state, resulting to a full reversal of the liberal public/private relation. Further afield, the biosecurity decrees of the Health Secretary result to regulatory chaos: neither citizens, the police or the politicians who impose them know what the rules are. Nonetheless, biosecurity measures cohere in that they suspend social, affective and political interaction; but permit, and impose, work.
