The History of Science and Medicine Presents: "Necrofinance: Speculative Epidemic Response and the World Bank"

Necrofinance: Speculative Epidemic Response and the World Bank

Alexandre White, PhD Assistant Professor, Sociology and History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University

On May 21^st, 2016 the World Bank announced the development of the first ever Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility to prevent the worst humanitarian and economic effects of epidemic emergencies. We see a transformation in how epidemic threat is quantified, how those suffering are constituted and realized in the responses to epidemic. The glaring weaknesses in the West African Ebola response exposed the limits of the World Health Organization, existing global health responses, and the reliance on global charity.

Drawing upon the theories of Achille Mbembe, Jean Baudrillard and others this talk will examine the historical roots of pandemic speculation and locates its role within the larger ecosystem of global infectious disease control. Dr. White puts forward a new concept to understand this expression of financial power: Necrofinance-the capacity to speculate upon the lives and deaths of others in order to dictate who may live and who may die. Necrofinance is the speculative logic through which economic value is conferred in life and loss in death, abstracted from the lived experience of those who perish. Central to necrofinancial systems is the reconstitution of human life at a population level into quantifiable metrics for the purposes of speculation.

This event will be presented via Zoom. RSVP for the link.

For more information about upcoming events please visit https://medicine.yale.edu/histmed/.