146 RüdigerKunow
imaginationtorecognizethisasasubtextofCrosby'sdetailedevocation
ofpastdaysofpre-lapsariancarelessnessandrevelingbeforethedisease
struck. Read against what the reader already knows by that time, the
quotesfromlocalnewspapersandthemisguidedself-assurednessofthe
populationmarktheglidingofthefootthatEdwardsiswarningagainst:
"Memphisisaboutthehealthiestcityonthecontinentatpresent...We
neednotfearinMemphis"etc.(Ame ricanPlague 45).
Thefallfromgraceorfromafalsesenseofsecurityisamotifalsoin
other works on contemporary epidemics. One prominent example is
Randy Shilts's HIV-AIDS epicAnd the Band Played On(1987) which
opensonthispanorama:
New York City [during the Bicentennial] had hosted the greatest party
ever known.Theguests had come from all over the world... This was
theparttheepidemiologistswouldlaternotewhentheystayeduplateat
nightandtheconversationdriftedtowardwhereithadstartedandwhen.
TheywouldrememberthatgloriousnightinNewYorkHarbor,allthose
sailors,andrecall:FromallovertheworldtheycametoNewYork.(3)Also later on, and especially in the chapter "Glory Days" (11-24),
Shilts'stextisinterspersedwithevocationsofpastpleasuresaspreludes
topresentproblems(asinCrosby'stext).Heespeciallytakestotaskthe
gay community in the San Francisco Bay Area for its carefree partying
and, of course, "patient zero," Gaëtan Dugas, for spreading the disease.
Asidefromthusspicinguphistextwiththeprivilegeofhindsight,Shilts
also presents an instance of that U.S. exceptionalism which American
Studies scholars are so fond talking about, this time as a nodal point, a
hub in the world-wide disease ecology: "From all over the world they
came to New York." As a further commentary on Shilts's text, I may
briefly point out how in representations such as this, infection gets
quickly displaced from the individual body and inserted into the realm
of some global geo- or biopolitics. In other words, the notion of a
specifically U.S.-American vulnerability recasts the old, essentially
colonial binary of the West vs. the rest in medicalized topographies of
MaryDouglas'sPurityandDanger(1966)discussedabove.
These brief textual examples are meant to stand for many others
whichcannotbediscussedhere.In thebiomedicalJeremiad,everything
has happened already and according to plan. It narrates the catastrophic