{"title":"Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror, 1817–2020 by Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb (review)","authors":"Bassam Sidiki","doi":"10.1353/lm.2021.0014","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"While this personal history is not readily apparent in the rest of the work, the preface prepares the reader to confront the subsequent subject matter not as an abstract theoretical project but one with tangible consequences for real people and the real world. Just as epidemiology strives to create a horizontal picture of a disease-event with attention to region, timing, and scale, so too does epidemiological reading situate disparate texts in a single field of analysis, facilitating conversation between texts rather than solely relying on a hermeneutics of suspicion which, as Raza Kolb argues, resembles the depth-interior model of the clinical gaze. [...]in the first chapter she reads Rudyard Kipling’s Kim alongside narratives of how a sham public health campaign played a role in identifying and killing Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. While the choice to whisk through so many different genres is not theorized, nor is it discussed how epidemiology may inform these genres in distinct ways, it aligns Raza Kolb’s approach with that of cultural studies, where texts from many genres are examined together as an archive of culture. [...]it demonstrates that the mediation of texts may be as important to the method of epidemiological reading as the texts themselves.","PeriodicalId":44538,"journal":{"name":"LITERATURE AND MEDICINE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2021-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/lm.2021.0014","citationCount":"7","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"LITERATURE AND MEDICINE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2021.0014","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 7
Abstract
While this personal history is not readily apparent in the rest of the work, the preface prepares the reader to confront the subsequent subject matter not as an abstract theoretical project but one with tangible consequences for real people and the real world. Just as epidemiology strives to create a horizontal picture of a disease-event with attention to region, timing, and scale, so too does epidemiological reading situate disparate texts in a single field of analysis, facilitating conversation between texts rather than solely relying on a hermeneutics of suspicion which, as Raza Kolb argues, resembles the depth-interior model of the clinical gaze. [...]in the first chapter she reads Rudyard Kipling’s Kim alongside narratives of how a sham public health campaign played a role in identifying and killing Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. While the choice to whisk through so many different genres is not theorized, nor is it discussed how epidemiology may inform these genres in distinct ways, it aligns Raza Kolb’s approach with that of cultural studies, where texts from many genres are examined together as an archive of culture. [...]it demonstrates that the mediation of texts may be as important to the method of epidemiological reading as the texts themselves.
虽然这段个人历史在作品的其余部分并不明显,但序言让读者准备好面对随后的主题,而不是作为一个抽象的理论项目,而是一个对真实的人和真实世界产生切实影响的项目。正如流行病学努力创造一个关注区域、时间和规模的疾病事件的横向画面一样,流行病学阅读也将不同的文本置于单一的分析领域,促进文本之间的对话,而不是仅仅依赖怀疑的解释学,正如拉扎·科尔布所说,怀疑的解释学类似于临床凝视的深度内部模型。[…]在第一章中,她阅读了鲁迪亚德·吉卜林(Rudyard Kipling)的《金》(Kim),同时讲述了一场虚假的公共卫生运动如何在2011年巴基斯坦识别并杀害奥萨马·本·拉登(Osama Bin Laden)中发挥作用。虽然选择快速浏览这么多不同的流派并没有理论化,也没有讨论流行病学如何以不同的方式为这些流派提供信息,但它将拉扎·科尔布的方法与文化研究的方法相一致,在文化研究中,来自多个流派的文本被作为文化档案一起检查。[…]这表明,文本的中介作用对流行病学阅读方法的重要性可能与文本本身一样。
期刊介绍:
Literature and Medicine is a journal devoted to exploring interfaces between literary and medical knowledge and understanding. Issues of illness, health, medical science, violence, and the body are examined through literary and cultural texts. Our readership includes scholars of literature, history, and critical theory, as well as health professionals.