TheMaterialismofBiologicalEncounters 111
to purify not only its public spaces, water and food, but also the bodies
and conduct of the inhabitants" (W. Anderson 1). Such a desire for
wholesale cleansing was rooted in the widely shared belief system that
saw indigenous people as sheer inexhaustible native reservoir for
infectiousdiseases.Americansstationedin thePhilippinessoonwereto
learn, however, that their campaign against perceived "native filth" (W.
Anderson48)wasinessencenotsomuchacolonistgifttothecolonized
but rather a well-considered act of "prophylactic protectionism" (Singer
30) or simply bio-medical self-defense.^65 Victor G. Heiser, American
director of health in the Philippines, 1905-1915, put it this way: "As
long as the Oriental was allowed to remain disease-ridden, he was a
constantthreattotheOccidental..."(qtd.inW.Anderson69).Insuch
statements, "Western," i.e. advanced knowledge concerning the biology
of infectious diseases, served as a valuable toolkit for a biopolitics of
location that recast the colonial binary of the West vs. the rest in terms
of medicalized topographiesarranged around yet anotherbinary, thatof
"purityanddanger"(Douglas).
Against this background, the project of bringing endemic infectious
diseasesundercontrolformedanecessarypre-requisitetowardsecuring
theburgeoningU.S.-AmericanEmpire.Inotherwords,gettingridofthe
biological burden was a way to make the American colonizers fit to
shoulder the White Man's colonial burden. With the possible exception
of Cuba, this burden was felt in the Philippines even more acutely than
in other places of U.S.-American imperialist intervention because there
was a gendered/nationalistic dimension involved in the colonization of
the archipelago. The time of the Spanish-American war and its colonial
aftermathwas,afterall,the"StrenuousAge"ofTeddyRooseveltandhis
RoughRiders,anageintheU.S.ofthere-assertionoftraditionalideals
of virility.^66 And clearly, such virility wasthepreferred socio-cultural
(^65) Aninterestingpointconcerningthecoloniesasearly-warningimmunedefense
systems is made by Philipp Sarasin et al.: "... the colonial imperative [was] to
safeguard the sanitary national body in the colonies and to protect that body
fromthebacteriaofthecolonies"(38;mytrans.).
(^66) For a contextualization cf. Anthony Rotundo who argues that toward the end
of the 19th century, a combination of embattled sexuality and desire for
aggression had created a framework within which the American man had to