114 RüdigerKunow
be among "the sorrows of empire."^70 In other words, there was and is a
bio-medical"blowback"atworkinU.S.imperialexpansionwhichmade
sure that this expansion was not simply another theater where Manifest
Destiny could stage itself unchallenged. Instead, the agency of local
disease ecologies registered powerfully in that context and manifested
itself through its effects on the health of Americans. They hit the virile
U.S.-American conqueror with a sense of precariousness which tended
to alienate—at least on location and on an individual level—the
conqueror from the fruits of his conquest. This constellation, nicely
captured by Susan Buck-Morss's term "anxieties of affluence" (25),
invites more reflection on the conceptual centrality of the lived and
living connections which made up the fabric of U.S.-American
imperialistexpansion.
This chapter could only offer a selective and symptomatic overview
of the formative role played by disease ecologies at critical junctures of
theevolutionofaU.S.-Americanempire.Inmultipleencounterswithits
"promiscuous spaces" (Wald,Contagious14), Americans abroad and at
home were alerted to the unwelcome and officially unacknowledged
side-effects of connectivities with a world deemed far away. In this
particular constellation, the new forms of biomedical governmentality
were designed to serveasan advanced immunesystem of sorts charged
with policing the biological encounters between different places and
people, thus allaying medical anxieties in the public sphere of the
country.
Across the "diverse biopolitical locations" (Berlant,CruelOptimism
7) of the American empire, spaces were and still are made, are named,
and also kept apart—on the basis of their biological constitution, of
purity and danger. In this peculiar topography, the human body, in
sicknessandinhealth,becameoneofthesespaces,aspacewherehome
endedandempirebegan.Suchconsiderationsarerelatedtoandineffect
bringusbacktothenotionofprecariousness,elaboratedabove.Whether
during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic or the West Nile Fever of the
1980s, many U.S.-Americans felt a manifest unease when they found
(^70) The term is Chalmer Johnson's, who, however, uses it in a different context,
namely the role of the U.S. as world policeman after the end of the Cold War
(Johnson, Chalmer.TheSorrowsofEmpire:Militarism,Secrecy,andtheEndof
theRepublic.NewYork:MetropolitanBooks,2005.Print.).