Anticipatory Vectors: The Politics and Poetics of Non-Domesticated Pigs in Denmark and Texas

TY - CHAP

T1 - Anticipatory Vectors

T2 - The Politics and Poetics of Non-Domesticated Pigs in Denmark and Texas

AU - Eilenberg, Michael

AU - Cons, Jason

PY - 2025/3

Y1 - 2025/3

N2 - This chapter brings together two heterogeneous cases of non-domesticated pigs to theorise the notion of anticipatory vectors. In both cases, non-domesticated pigs conjure both epidemiological concerns (pigs as vectors for a range of non-zoonotic and zoonotic diseases) and imaginaries of pigs as harbingers of other kinds of social and demographic collapse. In Denmark, a fence constructed along the Danish–German border intended to prevent the spread of African swine fever (ASF) to domestic pig farms provokes debates about the re-inscription of anti-immigrant nationalism in the wake of Europe’s migration crisis. In Texas, the rapid spread of feral hogs provokes often violent imaginaries that tie pigs to the threat of invasion by non-white Others. Non-domesticated pigs, in both cases, prompt responses that blur boundaries between biosecurity and biopolitics. Wild and feral pigs thus serve as vectors that concentrate anxieties about the future and mobilise often lethal responses to forestall it.

AB - This chapter brings together two heterogeneous cases of non-domesticated pigs to theorise the notion of anticipatory vectors. In both cases, non-domesticated pigs conjure both epidemiological concerns (pigs as vectors for a range of non-zoonotic and zoonotic diseases) and imaginaries of pigs as harbingers of other kinds of social and demographic collapse. In Denmark, a fence constructed along the Danish–German border intended to prevent the spread of African swine fever (ASF) to domestic pig farms provokes debates about the re-inscription of anti-immigrant nationalism in the wake of Europe’s migration crisis. In Texas, the rapid spread of feral hogs provokes often violent imaginaries that tie pigs to the threat of invasion by non-white Others. Non-domesticated pigs, in both cases, prompt responses that blur boundaries between biosecurity and biopolitics. Wild and feral pigs thus serve as vectors that concentrate anxieties about the future and mobilise often lethal responses to forestall it.

U2 - 10.33134/HUP-30-6

DO - 10.33134/HUP-30-6

M3 - Book chapter

SP - 165

EP - 197

BT - Fences and Biosecurity

A2 - Harrisson, Annika Pohl

A2 - Eilenberg, Michael

PB - Helsinki University Press

ER -