first things

 

  

This is my second semester teaching Digital Humanities; the first shifted from real to virtual about halfway through the semester, in response to the global changes directed toward containing viral spread. 

As people who love words do, I wondered about the words "virus" or "viral" and, because I was already sitting at my computer, I looked up its etymology first. Then I went to the OED:  the earliest meaning and use is listed as 1599, at which time it meant "venom." How we're using it now doesn't appear until over 100 years later, in 1728, and then it becomes a poison that's transmitted between humans or animals and humans. I am ruminating over the viscous liquid quality of the earlier definitions and wondering how this liquid poison became, in 1972, used in relation to computers. Computer viruses are not liquid venom passed from one body to another.The physical existence of computers is typically spoken about as if it is in the other corner of the room "body" might be.

"Viral" in relation to computers, or social media, really, is also very interesting to think about. A quick search of the internet (I'm not as enthusiastic about this definition) yields a definition that viral, or a viral image specifically, is one that spreads across platforms of social media and another says that it is "quickly and widely spread or popularized." Reaching back into historical definition, I wonder if the intention, when the word was first adapted to talk about social media images, was to slyly identify the rapid spread of images or texts or videos as poisonous. 

A few days ago, I looked up and left open in a tab on my browser, viral images of masks (mostly medical workers with impressions of mask edges on the skin or how-tos of wearing masks), then "Lady Gaga" and "mask" and "viral."

This was absolutely the best costume and mask. I don't know though. While it is a fact of daily life outside of home right now to wear a mask, I'm not sure that glamorous masks (and there are plenty in this article about Lady Gaga's influence on mask sales, along with links to glamorous masks for sale) are where money or writing or fashion should be directed. I'm really not sure in what sense this/these images are viral. Are they poison? Or rapidly spread? 

Whenever I think about virulence I end up thinking about Felix Gonzales-Torres. I think it was this exhibition at the Serpentine in London that I first encountered his foil-wrapped pile of candies. 

I don't remember it looking like this, but I do remember taking a few. One for myself, one for my boyfriend who was not at all sure I should be taking pieces of the exhibition, and a few for my pocket, where I found them, melted and stuck to the fabric, much later. I just knew, although I don't know how, that we were supposed to. Maybe I just saw someone else take one. 

I also remember thinking about the viral qualities of candy. Gonzales-Torres and his partner both died of AIDS in the 1990s, so I knew virulence was in his artist's vocabulary. I though about how the things we take from someone else, put into our bodies and absorb are in many forms and result very differently. This candy was round and sweet, I think that opaque white or gelatinous kind. It was a gift, I though at the the time. I still think it is a kind of gift, although now my understanding of it is complicated by T Fleischmann's essays about both himself and Gonzales-Torres works, the queer body, intimacy and power spreading.  It is also complicated by knowing that the weight of the candies, at the beginning of the day, was often the weight of Gonzales-Torres' lover, thanks to a very good review of Fleischmann's book, Time is a Thing the Body Moves Through."

And here we are, moving through time. Strange, tumultuous time. At a distance form one another. I wonder about what kind of poison the virus is and change my mind often. Getting used to the distance might be the one I worry about most. Certainly there are advantages, like being anywhere as long as there's internet access, to teaching and learning online. I miss being in a room with people though.