Closure and the Critical Epidemic Ending

Abstract

“An epidemic has a dramaturgic form,” wrote Charles Rosenberg in 1989 , “Epidemics start at a moment in time, proceed on a stage limited in space and duration, following a plot line of increasing and revelatory tension, move to a crisis of individual and collective character, then drift towards closure.” Rosenberg’s dramaturgic description has become an important starting point for critical studies of epidemic endings ( Vargha, 2016 ; Greene & Vargha, 2020 ; Charters & Heitman, 2021 ) that, rightly, criticize this structure for its neatness and its linearity. In this article, I want to nuance these criticisms by distinguishing between the term Rosenberg uses, “closure,” and its implicature, “ending.” I aim to show how many of the complications ensuing between the different forms of ending imagined may well be resolved by assessing whether they bring closure or not.

Information, Expertise, and Authority: The Many Ends of Epidemics

“…Yet what the contributions do all emphasize is a need to integrate such disciplinary methodologies in order to accurately understand the behaviour of epidemics and thus also their ends. More particularly, it is the messy nature of endings that highlights how epidemics are simultaneously biological, social, and political processes that continue Rose (2022). On contested origins, see, for example, Green (2020); Iliffe (2005, Ch. 2); Giles-Vernick, Gondola, Lachenal, & Schneider (2013).…”