Human Extinction and the Pandemic Imaginary

Taking the question of being human at the centre of his analysis, Christos Lynteris examines the imagination of human extinction driven by a ‘next pandemic’ and the loss of control over the boundaries and relations between human and non-human. What is particular to a pandemic “end of the world” that is not shared by other “ends of the world”? And how is this pandemic imaginary entangled with mastery as a cornerstone of human ontologies in the context of technoscientific capitalism?