Hearts of darkness and hot zones: The ideologeme of imperial contagion in recent accounts of viral outbreaks

Bass, Jeff D.

doi:10.1080/00335639809384231

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…For example, Mechling and Mechling's (1995) analysis of Disney's "Our Friend the Atom" project identified the project as an embodiment of Orientalism as they challenged what they called the "prideful view that we could convert the villainous atom into the heroic atom, our servant, our friend" (p. 450). Similarly, Bass (1998) argued that popular science stories about lethal viruses like Ebola employ the racist entailments of European colonialism to "present ideologically charged images of the Third World and its relationship to the West as objectively based scientific 'fact'" (p. 430).…”

Section: Judgment-focused Work: Challenging Science or Its Public Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent rhetorical studies in public understanding of science: Multiple purposes and strengths

2012

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We review rhetorical studies of the public understanding of science that were published in journals since the last major review in this journal (1994-2011). Our review suggests that a vibrant and increasingly sophisticated body of research 1) has pursued Gross's (1994) emphasis on contextual studies and studies emphasizing judgment of scientific rhetorics, 2) is producing a growing body of work designed to develop specific strategies for scientific rhetorics, and 3) has produced a host of studies exploring science-public interactions (rather than producing sustained fora for such interactions, as Gross argued for). It has, however, 4) produced only modest independent development of rhetorical theories.

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Section: Judgment-focused Work: Challenging Science or Its Public Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent rhetorical studies in public understanding of science: Multiple purposes and strengths

2012

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“…Disease and illness, therefore, became inextricably tied to filth, waste, and the disenfranchised populations who were denied access to cleaner living and working conditions. Such assumptions, not surprisingly, carried explicitly racist overtones not too different from the "imperial contagion" that Jeff Bass (1998) notes in his analysis of contemporary representations of colonized populations and disease. Looking back to British colonial rule, Bass writes that "The stigmatization of cultural 'Others' as sources of disease contamination, for example, generally involves an overtly racist projection of images of filth and defilement onto subject populations, usually for the purpose of validating the 'purity' of the imperial race" (431), which he argues persists in contemporary media representations of new disease strains like Ebola.…”

Section: Polio and The Articulation Of Middle-class Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contagion, Quarantine and Constitutive Rhetoric: Embodiment, Identity and the “Potential Victim” of Infectious Disease

Crowe

2022

J Med Humanit

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Through a rhetorical analysis of fragments of language used by United States public health experts, victims, and advocates during the early periods of polio, HIV and COVID-19, this project shows how constitutive rhetoric within infectious disease discourse articulates the subject position of potential victim for different publics. The author finds that the analyzed discourse simultaneously calls forth a negative identity that asks people to not become something and also asks for actions to prevent disease spread – and, in doing so, the awakening of potential victim reveals hegemonic assumptions about whose bodies are valued and whose are not.

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“…Recent inquiries into the discourses, technologies, and institutional practices of biosecurity provide another entry point into the study of VHF. Informed by the work of Michel Foucault, this strand of research begins precisely with the technical and logistical dimensions of VHF response that a focus on traditional culture tends to bracket out (e.g., Bass ; Braun ; Briggs ; Leach ). These approaches provide considerable insight into the geopolitical underpinnings of VHF surveillance—how, for instance, the technologies and agendas of global health are shaped by the war on terror (Collier et al ) or by changing imaginaries of “global health” (King ; Wald ).…”

Section: Repositioning Anthropologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Material Proximities and Hotspots: Toward an Anthropology of Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers

2014

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This article outlines a research program for an anthropology of viral hemorrhagic fevers (collectively known as VHFs). It begins by reviewing the social science literature on Ebola, Marburg, and Lassa fevers and charting areas for future ethnographic attention. We theoretically elaborate the hotspot as a way of integrating analysis of the two routes of VHF infection: from animal reservoirs to humans and between humans. Drawing together recent anthropological investigations of human–animal entanglements with an ethnographic interest in the social production of space, we seek to enrich conceptualizations of viral movement by elaborating the circumstances through which viruses, humans, objects, and animals come into contact. We suggest that attention to the material proximities—between animals, humans, and objects—that constitute the hotspot opens a frontier site for critical and methodological development in medical anthropology and for future collaborations in VHF management and control.

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Hearts of darkness and hot zones: The ideologeme of imperial contagion in recent accounts of viral outbreaks

Cited by 11 publications

References 14 publications

Recent rhetorical studies in public understanding of science: Multiple purposes and strengths

Recent rhetorical studies in public understanding of science: Multiple purposes and strengths

Contagion, Quarantine and Constitutive Rhetoric: Embodiment, Identity and the “Potential Victim” of Infectious Disease

Material Proximities and Hotspots: Toward an Anthropology of Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers

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