Thus, in accordance with such a methodology, this paper will investigate two key points that traverse the traditional, Cartesian opposition between the material and the cultural, and which I feel are particularly important in thinking through the specific contributions the computer virus can give to contemporary political thought. Because the media studies approach is flexible and inclusive, making it particularly adept at migrating between traditionally opposed humanistic and scientific perspectives, my analysis will by necessity take as its foundation a kind of hybrid point-of-view on the multiple operations and characteristics of computer viruses (without, again, making any pretensions towards synthesis). That being said, by reducing my analysis to merely two points, I, of course, do not wish to reduce the complexity of the virus to a contained set of universal essences - for a "point" is never merely a self-contained node, discrete object, or body present to itself, but, as my epigraph by Foucault notes, a coincident meeting point of many vectors of force. My "points" are, thus, always just a collection of edges overlapping from elsewhere, providing only a loose structural framework within which various flows and forces of thought can momentarily converge and plateau, before deterritorializing beyond their origin into another line of flight. As a fundamentally transmedial, transdiciplinary, and irreducible entity, the virus always eludes easy containment; and as such, it should be continually acknowledged that my specific take on the virus represents only one of many possible constellations.

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