How have the practice and “idea” of safety changed as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic? In this chapter, Serres’s work on the foundation and marking out of social relations is used to analyze the shifting porous boundaries between the “soft” semiotic and “hard” social distancing aspects of public safety practices. Serres’s long-standing interest in the manner in which death serves as the “first object” through which the collective collects itself is explored, along with his critique of property relations as “soiling gestures.” This culminates in the idea of “Panbiota,” the necessary global coexistence of all organisms, which is now entirely dependent on human actions but utterly beyond human mastery. Serres’s speculative thoughts on the future of “living together” are discussed. Along the way, different aspects of Serres’s thinking allow for a number of reformulations of what “safety” might be for the Anthropocenic Panbiota.
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