TheMaterialismofBiologicalEncounters 59
traditionalformsofviolencesuchasexplosives"(Mitchell20;cf.Mayer
1; Tomes, "Epidemic Entertainments" 626; M. Cooper, "Pre-empting
Emergence"113-35).
Theanalogyevoked(viatheimmunesystem)betweenthebiological
body and the body politic is too obvious and suggestive to be set aside
peremptorily: pathogenic microbial material, as Priscilla Wald and
others have shown in rich detail, is often being considered as un-
American, coming from elsewhere (Kraut,SilentTravelers30; Markel,
Germs36, 49; Wald,Contagious16-18, 173). There is nothing new
about this. In fact, in the Age of Reason, the EuroAmerican
Enlightenment, one fear held millions in thrall, the fear of syphilis, a
sexuallytransmitteddiseasewhichwasbelievedtohavecomefromone
or the other of the broad and fast-changing array of national enemies.
AndsotheItalianscalledit"theFrenchdisease,"theFrenchthe"Italian
disease," the Russians "the Polish disease," etc. More than a century
later,thedeadliestepidemicinhistorysofar,theSpanishFluattheend
of World War I, was perceived by contemporaries—many of them
political isolationists—as an "imported" disease, something "our boys"
caught when fighting abroad. There was even empirical proof for this
assumption because "the mother of all pandemics" (Taubenberger and
Morens 69) was indeed brought into the United States by returning
servicemen (Byerly 87). This "forgotten pandemic" (Hovanec 161)
killed more people than the War itself, friend and foe alike; estimates
rangefrom20to40milliondeadacrosstheglobe(Kraut,"Immigration"
123-25; "Spanish Influenza" n. pag.). In its drastic consequences, it
exemplifies what Louis Pasteur once called "the infinitely great power
of the infinitely small" (Markel,Germs17): the flu was caused by a
virus too small to be seen even under the microscope. In today's
reflectionsonbiologicaldangerfromtheoutside,thereisevenasliding
scale here, ranging from un-American to anti-American (M. Cooper,
LifeasSurplus79;Markel,Germs195-98).
These facts are well-known, also in American and Cultural studies,
andwillnotbepursuedfurtherintheargumentthatfollows.Instead,the
purpose of the reflections offered there is to use the encounters media-
ted by the biology of human beings as a critical lens for culture-critical
inquiries. Human biology and the human body in particular are crucial
but puzzling mediators of I-WE or self-other relations. This fact
predisposes them, I will argue here, for a renewed reading of two key