Epidemics and Othering
The Biopolitics of COVID-19 in Historical and Cultural Perspectives
1st Edition
Published on 2. November 2023
246 pages
978-3-8394-6505-9 (ISBN)
Description
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of many people around the globe and has brought to the fore discussions about the ways in which relations of power have shaped human biology and the health of populations. Focusing on these biopolitics, this collection brings together a number of historical and cultural perspectives on processes of othering in the long transnational human history of epidemics and pandemics. Contributors explore the intertwinement of biopolitics and othering with regard to specific bodies, people, and places, in relation to COVID-19 and beyond, as they discuss othering dynamics in the context of post/colonialism and with reference to a number of different cultural, political, medical and media discourses.
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Heike Steinhoff
Epidemics and Othering
The Biopolitics of COVID-19 in Historical and Cultural Perspectives
Book
11/2023
1st Edition
transcript
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Heike Steinhoff is Junior Professor of American Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Her research focuses on American media culture from the 19th to the 21st century, gender studies, body studies, and urban studies. She is the author of two monographs, one on makeovers and monstrosities in American culture and the other one on pirates in Hollywood cinema. She has also published on hipster culture, literary discourses of urban sexuality in 19th century America, gender in children's movies, filmic representations of metropolitan masculinities, and the interrelations of body positivity, self-help literature and popular feminisms.
Content
- Cover
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1. Biopolitics, Othering, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Critical Introduction
- COVID-19 and Biopolitics
- COVID-19 and the Politics of Othering
- Framing Bodies, Selves/Others, and Affects during COVID-19
- The Ambiguity of Biopolitics in a Pandemic World
- Historical and Cultural Perspectives on Epidemics and the (Bio)Politics of Othering
- Works Cited
- 2. Pandemics, Biopolitics and Coloniality: From Chronicles of the Indies to COVID-19 Fictions
- The Contagious Other
- Othering in COVID-19 Fictions
- Conclusions
- Works Cited
- 3. 'Enlightened' Colonialism, Smallpox, and the Indigenous Other in Late Eighteenth-Century Mexico and Guatemala
- European Invasion and Demographic Crisis in New Spain
- The 1780 Smallpox Outbreak in Guatemala
- Smallpox in the Intendancy of Oaxaca (1796/97)
- State Subjects and Othering
- Works Cited
- 4. 'Civilizing the Natives' with Modern Medicine: Strategies of Othering in the Implementation of Public Hygiene in Japan-Ruled Taiwan (1895-1945)
- The 'Hygienic Turn' and Its Impact on Japanese Colonialism
- The Redefinition of Chinese Cultural Heritage
- Institutionalizing Hygiene in Taiwan
- The Bubonic Plague as the Litmus Test of Japanese Disease Control in Taiwan
- Othering Through Sanitation
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- 5. Fear of Contagion: Epistemology of Boundaries and Politics of Emotions in (Post)Colonial Development Discourses
- The Danger of Contagion: Epistemology of Delineation
- International Development and Health Politics and Economic Security
- International Development and Health Politics, Political Security and Colonial Amnesia
- International Development and Health Politics and Competitive Capability
- International Mission and Epidemics: Health as Religious Task
- Aesthetic Regimes of the Development Discourse: Othering Dynamics via Hypervisibility
- Time and the Other: Multiple Temporalities
- Works Cited
- 6. The Other as Conspirator: Historical Roots of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories
- Anti-Vaccination Movements and Anti-Semitism in History
- The Querdenker
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- 7. The Quest for Tropical Nature: Utopia and Socio-Spatial Dynamics in Brazil during the COVID-19 Pandemic
- A Few Remarks on Utopia and Tropical Nature in Brazil
- "I Live in a Tropical Country": The Corona Paradise Project
- Fugere Urbem: Gated Communities and Dreams of Mobility and Security in Brazil
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Interviews
- 8. Pandemic Play? Digital Sports Gaming, Fatness, and Contemporary Pandemic Imaginaries
- Disability Studies and Fat Bodies
- The On-Screen-Fitness/Off-Screen Fatness Binary and 'Two Pandemics'
- (In lieu of a) Conclusion
- Works Cited
- 9. The Virus Is Present, Presence Is Virulent: Being Co(m)present with Others in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic
- (Mediated) Presence and Othering
- From Copresence to Compresence
- Co(m)presence in the Zoom Room
- Audiovisual Compresence as Filmic Trans/Individuation
- Share the Square
- Compresence with Others-Talking Heads and Split Screens
- Compresence with the Environment-Bodies and Backgrounds
- Compresence with Media-Monitoring Monitors
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- 10. The Necropolitics of Breathing: On the Scream as Resistance in Contemporary Sound Performances
- Deep Breathing, "U Don't Know My Name, U Don't Know My Name"
- Losing One's Breath and Voice
- Troubled Air and the Scream as Resistance
- Works Cited
- 11. Re-Negotiating Discourses on AIDS during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Roundtable Discussion
- In how far can pandemic narratives surrounding SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 be linked to those surrounding HIV/AIDS?
- What are pitfalls of the comparison of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS and where do you see narrative ruptures?
- How do other factors of social differentiation - beyond those already discussed - intersect with and complicate narratives of disease?
- Works Cited
- Simon Dickel
- Roselyne Masamha and Lennon Mhishi
- Florian Zitzelsberger
- Authors
