138 RüdigerKunow
(98) family resemblances to the anti-narrative impulses of Modernism
which sought to address the experienced unrepresentability of modern
life by deconstructing the bourgeois world's cherished mode of
representation, narrative coherence. Frank's third model buys into a
narrative model of long standing in Western culture, the quest. Over a
period of suffering recorded in this narrative, "the idea that illness has
been a journey emerges. The meaning of the journey emerges
recursively:thejourneyistakeninordertofindoutwhatsortofjourney
one has been taking" (117). Answers to this question might be varying
widely; in any case this third type is reminiscent of the "the journey is
the goal"-ideology of deferred closure exemplified by Frank Kermode's
TheSenseofanEnding(1967).
Frank's triadic system is helpful, more so perhaps for pointing out
possibleattitudinalvariantsinanindividual'spersonalexperienceofand
responsetoaseriousillness,thanforaculturalcriticalunderstandingof
the relation between disease and narrative in the social and cultural
manifold. What is especially lacking in Frank is attention to the public,
collective dimension of disease. As the argument so far has shown, a
massdiseaseispublicmatter,andespeciallyaninfectiousdisease.Such
a disease is public not simply because it affects so many, but because
reactions to it are public, too, resourced by the available cultural
archives and the narratives provided by them. This is what I earlier on
havecalled"culturalcontent."
Inotherwords,diseasenarrativescarrywiththemsocialandcultural
knowledgesandsuppositionsofabroaderkindwhichthenimpactonthe
narrative representation of the disease itself. Therefore, instead of
simply "applying" Frank's individualistic scheme to narratives of mass
disease, I will attempt to develop an analytic of a different kind, by
highlighting the ideological suppositions involved in the symbiotic
relationship between disease and narrative. As I have repeatedly argued
in this chapter, casting disease experience into cultural formats is not a
daunting task after all, especially if such representations take on
narrative form. In fact, epidemics can be said to possess story-book
qualities; Howard Markel even suggests they have "narrative power"
("Reflections"7).Oneofthefirstsystematicattemptstoaccountforthis
power and to devise a narrative model for the representation of
epidemicsisPriscillaWald'sconceptofthe"outbreaknarrative."Sucha
narrative,Waldsays,