84 RüdigerKunow
transfer of something from a to b, and a positional one; infection takes
placeatagivenlocationassomethingtransitsfromoneplacetoanother.
The medical definition and use of the term converges around a number
offactors:
The invasion of a susceptible host by a disease agent (a pathogenic
organism) that can develop and proliferate and usually, but not
necessarily, causes overt disease. Pathogenic organisms include viruses,
bacteria, mycoses (fungi), protozoa such as the malaria parasite, and
metazoa such as fleas, lice, and many intestinal parasites.... Infection
may be unapparent, i.e., subclinical, or manifest as anything from mild
illness to fulminating, overwhelming, and rapidly fatal disease. (Last,
"Infection")Iwillusethisdefinitionthroughoutthefollowingargumentwhichis
of course not medical but cultural-critical yet highlights factors which
are important also for the cultural presence of infectious diseases, such
as "invasion," "susceptibility," "proliferation," and, the "unapparent"
character of the movement of pathogenic material from person to
person. The transfer of these component factors into the realm of
cultural critique is relatively unproblematic and all the more plausible,
all the more so because soon after its introduction into the English
language (probably during the 14thcentury), the term traveled to other
fields of application: aggregating around itself meanings beyond its
more narrowly medical sense, it became a model for the horizontal
diffusion and distribution of ideas and concepts, but also forms of
humanbehavior:^34 Laughteriscommonlyassumedtobeproliferating,as
are rumors, fashions, also commonplaces or stereotypes. One might
(^34) Among the most relevant applications of the infection concept outside the
medicalrealmisHegel'suseinthePhenomenologyofSpirit,wherehelikensthe
spreading of Enlightenment ideas with an infection. The translator A. V. Miller
renders the GermanAnsteckungnot as contagion but (closer to the medical
understandingtoday)asinfection:"apenetratinginfectionwhichdoesnotmake
itselfnoticeablebeforehandassomethingopposedtotheindifferentelementinto
which it insinuates itself, and therefore cannot be warded off. Only when the
infection has become widespread is that consciousness, which unheedingly
yieldedtoitsinfluence,awareofit"(331;italicsoriginal).