122 RüdigerKunow
authorityoftheGodsreassertsitselfonceagaininfearandloathingover
against individual human beings and their attempts to emancipate
themselvesfromthedominionofthesupernatural.Suchattemptsexacta
high price, as recorded in theDialecticofEnlightenment: "the subject's
flight from mythical powers" (Horkheimer and Adorno 37) ultimately
takes him/her not to the realm of freedom, but to new forms of
subjugation. It "practically always involves the annihilation of the
subject in whose service that mastery is maintained, because the
substance which is mastered, suppressed, and disintegrated by self-
preservation is nothing other than the living entity" of the natural. This
process"appearsprototypicallyintheherowhoescapesthesacrificeby
sacrificing himself" (Horkheimer and Adorno 37, 43). Oedipus ratifies
this principle in his final act of self-immolation with which Sophocles
concludeshisdrama.
It is perhaps no co-incidence that subsequent versions of the
Oedipus-motif do not highlight the medical dimension as much as
Sophocles did, even though throughout classical antiquity
communicablediseasesneverceasedtopreoccupypeopleandremained
a top item of the "communal agenda" (Abrams 13), also of course
amongmedicallyinterestedpeoplesuchasHippocrates.^75
However, no historical narrative is intended here; so that for the
continuing exploration of the intimate (in all senses of the word)
connectionbetweendiseasecommunicabilityandcommunication,Iwill
nowturntoexamplesfromNorthAmerica.Thepandemicsthatevolved
inthewakeofEuropeans'"discovery"ofthe"NewWorld"havealready
been mentioned in an earlier section of this chapter. However, the
relations between the personal, the communal, and the supernatural,
which formed the substance of Sophocles's tragedy, manifested
themselves also in the aftermath of these pandemics. The indigenous
population of the Americas had no immune system which could protect
them from newly imported mass diseases such as smallpox. The
staggering death toll that resulted proved to be not only a human
catastrophebutalsoaculturalone.Ialreadymentionedhowindigenous
(^75) In the Hippocrates corpus, there is a treatise on epidemics which specifically
addresses the plague during the Peloponnesian War; cf. "Overview of
Hippocratic Epidemic."Asclepion.Indiana University Bloomington. 19 May
2000.Web.5Oct.2015.