First year student Little Tommy Brown has been subject to scientific examination after a new bacteria, scabbamarie jagosii, was discovered gaining sentience on his knee.
The unprecedented medical issue came to light when the bacteria began submitting its first book ‘The Biopolitics of the Left Trouser Leg’ for publishing.
The scab has displayed a host of unusual behaviours including compelling nearby tissue to complete work without pay. It also resisted examination by the medical staff at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, suggesting that their horror at the infection represented “an incursion of biopower encapsulated in the sterile institution of the hospital via surveillance into the realm of the subjective, the bodily and embodied.”
“What really does it mean to be infected? How can we deconstruct the liminal and hermeneutically suspicious divides between external and internal organic matter? Who are we to bestow labels like ‘pathogen’?”
Brown sustained the injury after taking a rough fall as he tried to cross the picket line of last week’s NTEU strikes. Ironically, he had insisted he needed to cross the picket to attend a biology lab and check on his petri dishes. Prevented from doing so, he decided to become a petri dish.
