Geographic charisma and the potential energy of Ebola

Abstract

The Ebola virus is unparalleled in its charismatic ability to ignite fear, anxiety and disgust at a scale grossly disproportionate to the number of lives it claims. As an archetypal ‘Emerging Infectious Disease’ (EID), this designation and the politics that have encircled it have provided Ebola with a conceptual space in which epidemiology and geography to splice together in the genesis and maintenance of its charismatic valence. Even before the West African outbreak of 2013–2016, Ebola was an ‘exceptional’ and ‘master status’ disease around which media attention mobilised to an unparalleled degree and effect. This paper argues that even if never directly conceptualised as such, Ebola is uniquely charismatic among EIDs and, more, this charisma can be understood geographically. To do so, the paper proceeds in three parts to explore how Ebola's geographic charisma emerges from: (i) it being fixed ‘in place’ as something innately African; (ii) fears about the virus moving ‘out of place’ and (iii) its ‘potential energy’ or the persistent unease generated by the uncertainty of when and where the virus's potential geographies will become actual.

Marginalisation, Ebola and Health for All: From Outbreak to Lessons Learned

“…The West African outbreak was the first outbreak to lead to a major global public health threat and was unprecedented in the spread of the virus across international borders [29]. Notwithstanding the novel features of this outbreak, the challenge of addressing the epidemic was not a new or unprecedented challenge [22,30,31,32]. Similarly, as we have suggested elsewhere [33], in times of emergent health crises, irresponsibilities may arise in the manner in which responses are framed and implemented.…”

“…African “Otherness” overpowers the possibility of a non-cultural causality in the dominant discourse, and other factors are left unexamined as potentially causal or exacerbating” [13]. The ‘othering’ of Ebola to Africa over the past decades has “reinforced the virus’s mystique by squarely associating it with far-flung places out of the geographic purview of all but the most adventurous virus-hunters” [32]. This is despite the fact that Ebola is not endemic to any particular place on the African continent [32].…”

“…The ‘othering’ of Ebola to Africa over the past decades has “reinforced the virus’s mystique by squarely associating it with far-flung places out of the geographic purview of all but the most adventurous virus-hunters” [32]. This is despite the fact that Ebola is not endemic to any particular place on the African continent [32]. Furthermore, this is also despite the fact that culture has not proven to be a barrier to containment in Africa in the past.…”

Understanding and managing uncertainty in health care: revisiting and advancing sociological contributions

“…For patients engaging with screening programmes, the risk experience in the absence of symptoms, becomes about measured vulnerability (Gillespie 2012). In terms of pandemic preparedness we see the ‘potential energy’ and ‘persistent unease’ associated with uncertainties of when and where threats such as Ebola become real (Herrick 2019) and how modelling methods and calculation practices accommodate these uncertainties (Mansnerus 2013). Within the context of social media and debates about vaccination in a post‐truth era, the reflexivity of social actors intersects with certainty and uncertainty (Numerato et al .…”

Epidemic temporalities: A concise literature review

“…By contrast, preparedness policies tackle quite different threats: emergent infectious diseases (King 2002). In this originally American world view, the virus potentially responsible for the 'next pandemic' is an enemy in constant mutation (Herrick 2019). As epidemiological expectations are by definition surpassed by viral mutations, preparedness ruptures with prevention.…”