104 RüdigerKunow
biological material. And so, following the principle of "'We' go there,
'they' come here" (Legters et al. 277), the yellow fever epidemic of that
year, which was already stretching across the American hemisphere, all
thewayfromtheCaribbeantotheOhioRivervalley,alsofounditsway
intothecity(Wrenn21-23).
Memphis was located in a transnational ecology avant la lettre,
marked by a shared but inexplicable and largely invisible vulnerability
totravelingbiotaandaresultingprecariousnesswhichdidnotsparethat
part of the population which had no contact with the outside world (M.
Crosby 57-68). These susceptibilities would grow and become more
urgent as U.S.-American influence in the hemisphere and beyond
expanded,asIhopetoshowintwoadditionalcasestudies.
TheWhiteMan's"BiologicalBurden":EmpireandDisease
Disease ecologies, as the previous examples have shown, perform
important social and cultural work across the American hemisphere by
providing "a protocol for constructing boundaries between sites of
affinity and sites of alienation" (Athanasiou 144). While the traditional
imagecomplexofInter-orLatinAmericaassuchsitesofalienation,as
a "hot zone" of disease, has in our own moment become politically
incorrectandwheninvokedismorecarefullycamouflaged,earliertimes
have not been so bashful, especially when such "hot" or danger zones
stood in the way of expanding the commercial, military and broadly
geopolitical outreach of the United States. Especially during the high
tide of EuroAmerican imperialism, disease ecologies functioned as
building blocks for a revamped, now scientifically licensed biopolitics
oflocation.
Toaddress the intersection ofdisease ecologies and human mobility
in the perspective outlined so far demands a brief reflection on the idea
andmaterialrealitiesofwhatiscalledthe"Americanempire."Needless
to say that no single or accepted definition of this empire exists, if any
exists at all,^56 and especially so because the American version of
(^56) Also, questions about the nature of this empire, itsde factoor perhaps
secondary or informal character are of rather peripheral importance for the
presentargument.MyuseoftheconcepthasbeenresourcedbyHardtandNegri,