About
Limn is an experiment in outlining.
It combines the collaborative focus of a special issue of a journal with the spontaneity and interactivity of new media. Limn focuses on reconstruction and recomposition of concepts in contemporary culture. Limn is modeled on the convivial and critical features of a studio in art, architecture or design. Each episode differs from the last-different curators bring different problems and approaches to the basic concepts and tools developed in and through the process.
Issue 5, 2015
Ebola's Ecologies
Editors: Stephen J. Collier, Christopher M. Kelty, and Andrew Lakoff
This issue of Limn on “Ebola’s Ecologies” examines how the 2014 Ebola outbreak has put the norms, practices, and institutional logics of global health into question, and examines the new assemblages that are being forged in its wake. The contributions focus on various domains of thought and practice that have been implicated in the current outbreak, posing questions such as: What has been learned about the ambitions and the limits of humanitarian medical response? What insights are emerging concerning the contemporary organization of global health security? To what extent have new models of biotechnical innovation been established in the midst of the crisis?
Articles
Introduction: Ebola’s Ecologies
Andrew Lakoff, Stephen J. Collier and Christopher Kelty ask what the 2014 Ebola outbreak tells us about the history of pandemic preparedness and the blindspots of global health security today.
Timeline: Ebola 2014
The timeline of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, compiled by Andrew Lakoff.
Outbreak of Unknown Origin in the Tripoint Zone
Guillaume Lachenal traces the urgent past of the current ebola outbreak, offering some surprising lessons about borders.
Ebola, 1995/2014
Nicholas B. King looks back at the dialectics of confidence and paranoia in the Ebola outbreaks of 1995 and 2014.
Two States of Emergency: Ebola 2014
Andrew Lakoff revisits the received wisdom that the WHO was slow to respond. Slow to respond to what exactly?
The Disease that Emerged
Lyle Fearnley explores how global preparedness for emerging diseases left some places unprepared.
Frozen By the Hot Zone
Joanna Radin explores the role of the “hot zone” in immobilizing people, blood and information.
Ebola, Running Ahead
What does experimentation look like in the time of emergency? Ann H. Kelly explores the design of clinical trials amidst the ebola crisis.
Medical Vulnerability, or Where There Is No Kit
Where there is no kit and no infrastructure, there is vulnerability. Peter Redfield explores the role of medical humanitarian response in the Ebola crisis.
Global Health Doesn’t Exist
Global health is like the viruses it claims to be combatting; Theresa MacPhail explains how.
Ebola, Chimeras, and Unexpected Speculation
Alex Nading explains how brincidofovir's path to the front lines of the Ebola crisis underscores the contingent, speculative, “chimeric” nature of contemporary global health.
An Ebola Photo Essay
Frédéric Le Marcis and Vinh-Kim Nguyen document ebola's ecologies in photos.