118 RüdigerKunow
collectively, i.e., with the collectivity (and not the medical
establishment)asintendedreference.
Disease communications have historically been resourced by
drawing on a wide variety of authorities, spiritual, folkloristic, political
or broadly cultural.^73 Regardless of what these sources had to offer in a
givencase,diseasecommunicationalmostalwayshavehadtheeffectof
turning the private, the intimacies of one body, into public matter, an
objectofinterestforeverybody.Asthepositionswherethe"I"endsand
the "we" begins are thus reshuffled, medical emergencies can thus be
said to have their proper place not only in the individual body so much
but in the body politic. The advent of EuroAmerican modernity even
compounded this development. As epidemics gradually lost their
transcendental implications (as signs of divine displeasure), and
presented instead a challenge to human aspirations of control over
nature and one's own destiny, they became resolutely political,
expressions of a good or bad social order. As a link was thus forged
between public health and governance,^74 the biology of human life
became a systemic element inside the public sphere, the domain where
"private persons come together to form a public... deal[ing] with
matters of general interest" (Habermas,Society and Politics231). The
medical history of the United States provides ample evidence that very
few matters have historically been of greater interest to the public than
the common health. This is also the reason why epidemics hold such a
special place in the cultural memory and the cultural imaginary of the
UnitedStatesasofanygivensocialformation(Wald,Treichler,Markel,
CooperandKiple).
(^73) In many historical instances of disease communication among lay people,the
appeal was to the authorities of experience or common sense. The strength of
such appeals is reflected in the complicated argumentative maneuvers which
CottonMatherfeltnecessaryinordertoconvinceBostoniansofhisnewmethod
ofinoculation.
(^74) Asiswell-known,thislinkwasexploredbyFoucaultundertheumbrellaterm
"biopolitics." But his focus on the "anatomo-politics of the human body"
(History of Sexuality 139; italics original) and the latter's passing "into
knowledge's field of control and power's sphere of intervention" (History of
Sexuality142) does not include reflections on the medical and communicative
urgenciescreatedbymassdiseases.