Quarantine: Decolonial and ontopolitical explorations of disease, knowledge and mobility in Sierra Leone
Governments have historically used quarantine and sanitary policies to control the movements of colonial populations and enforce racial segregation, but its legal, ethical and political dimensions have mostly been studied with regard to its implementation in the global North. Such analyses overlook the extent to which quarantine was implicated in the making of trans-Atlantic geographies of mobility and immobility and the production of a colonial modernity.
In light of this, my project will aim to engage with decolonial and ontopolitical thinking to offer an analysis of mobility practices and the ordering of knowledge in the context of the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic. Conceptually, the project aims to test the possibility and relevance of an engagement with both decolonial thinking and ontopolitics for the study of postcolonial disease management.
Methodologically, it aims to provide an account based on in-depth interviews with 1) members of the Sierra Leonean diaspora in Britain and 2) international responders to the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak, complemented by an ethnographic approach to 3) British colonial archives of quarantine and disease control.
Overall, my project aims to inform and contribute to disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship by analysing three case studies relevant to disease management in a postcolonial context, while exploring the coloniality of (im)mobilities and knowledges involved in the making of quarantine.