Seminar on History and Narratives of Pandemic
Issued on: Fri, 18th Dec 2020
By: Bishakha Chaudhury
Our Digital Society and Economy Interdisciplinary Group hosted a presentation by Prof Andreas Bernard from the Centre of Digital Cultures at Leuphana University on December 7th, 2020. Discussing his upcoming book on the history and narratives that we build around and during pandemics, Professor Bernard talked about the “poetics of immunity” where the spread of infection is seen in terms of relationships and communication between people and immunity is constructed as the lack or breakdown of the same social processes. He talked about the effort to track the spread of a disease in terms of the path of contagious communication and the challenges of modeling this path in order to identify interventions that would stop the spread with minimum disruption to socio-economic life of the population.
Professor Bernard took us through the historical representations of bacteriology and virology infection models of explaining contagion, drawing insightful connections with Miasma theory to Louis Pasture’s germ theory of disease. By making the environment and air the bearer of disease, the Miasma theory, he argued, provides a narrative that focuses on improving environmental hygiene and thus maintaining the social and economic life. This perspective is seen to be more prevalent in modern western democracies where surveillance of the individual is not of primary interest and maybe met with public resistance. While making microorganisms and body the infection bearer and therefore employing segregation and surveillance is seen more predominant in monarchies. The presentation of the current Covid-19 pandemic shows that it is not just the environment or the collective living that is important, but also the contagiousness passed by the human body. And, in the current context, it is harder to create a coherent representation of the spread of the disease in the urban anonymous crowded network than in a more sparse rural population where traceability takes different forms and may be achieved more easily. Even though mobile tracking apps can be used in the cities, the crossover of traces is obliterated in the crowded life of the modern metropolis. Going forward, it will be important to look at how anonymity might change in smart cities and how strict surveillance, as already being practiced in Chinese cities, might contribute to the management and narratives we create about pandemics.
Once the floor was opened for discussion further interesting realities about the current pandemic were brought up around the conditions of existence and inequality that have played out in the North-South divide in England and an East-West divide in Scotland. The political discourse of the pandemic was also highlighted. Individualistic and neoliberal views emerged in the public discourse as people only took care of their own health leaving others to care for theirs. This perspective was juxtaposed with the collective social view where we wear masks and keep distance to protect others and oneself. This view is also expected to play out on the acceptance of vaccine where individual views would reject risking the new vaccine while the collective approach would take the vaccine to protect themselves and their social contacts. A constant negotiation of digital and in-person social interactions of the quarantine are seen to play out, with little consideration for class and economic conditions in the top-down political discourse, clashing with the bottom-up concerns of daily struggles and the need for supporting families. The current pandemic has also brought about a strengthening of nationalist discourses which need to be carefully investigated as we try to better understand the mechanisms of communication during health crises.