UC Irvine

Daughters of Wolbachia is an experimental feminist horror film based on research into the biological phenomenon of widespread feminization in arthropod populations due to Wolbachia bacteria. A companion piece to the film, this text uses the Hegelian formation of lordship and bondage to think through the violence of patriarchal infection, as it exists in the butterfly and human landscapes. Introducing Wolbachia as a third term outside of the lord and bondswoman dyad, the secondary bacterial infection is posed as a site of liberation. Bacteria spreads.