Embodying Contagion

The Viropolitics of Horror and Desire in Contemporary Discourse

Edited by Sandra Becker, Megen de Bruin-Molé, Sara Polak

Publication date:

15 March 2021

Length of book:

288 pages

Publisher

University of Wales Press

Dimensions:

216x138mm

ISBN-13: 9781786836908

BOOK DESCRIPTION
TABLE OF CONTENTS

OPEN ACCESS

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This edited volume is also available to read on OAPEN: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/47586

From Outbreak to The Walking Dead, apocalyptic narratives of infection, contagion and global pandemic are an inescapable part of twenty-first-century popular culture. Yet these fears and fantasies are too virulent to be simply quarantined within fictional texts. The vocabulary and metaphors of outbreak narratives have permeated how news media, policymakers and the general public view the real world and the people within it. In an age where fact and fiction seem increasingly difficult to separate, contagious bodies (and the discourses that contain them) continually blur established boundaries between real and unreal, legitimacy and frivolity, science and the supernatural. Where previous scholarly work has examined the spread of epidemic realities in horror fiction, the essays in this collection also consider how epidemic fantasies and fears influence reality. Initiating dialogue between scholarship from cultural and media studies, and scholarship from the medical humanities and social sciences, this collection gives readers a fuller picture of the viropolitics of contagious bodies in contemporary global culture.

Notes on Contributors Preface Embodying the Fantasies and Realities of Contagion Part I: Epidemic Fantasies in Reality Chapter 1: The Krokodil Drug Menace, Cross-Genre Body Horror, and the Zombie Apocalypse Chapter 2: Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic and the Ebola Scare – How the CDC’s Use of Zombie Pop Culture Helped Fan a Nationalist Outbreak Narrative Chapter 3: The Zika Virus, Ebola Contagion Narratives, and U.S. Obsessions with Securitizing Neglected Infectious Diseases Chapter 4: An Affectionate Epidemic: How Disability Goes Viral on Social Media Chapter 5: ‘Fatties Cause Global Warming’: The Strange Entanglement of Obesity and Climate Change Part II: Epidemic Realities in Fantasy Chapter 6: ‘Time is of the Essence, Doctor’: Twenty-First Century (Post-)Apocalyptic Fiction, White Fatherhood, and Anti-Intellectual Tendencies in FX’s The Strain Chapter 7: Killable Hordes, Chronic Others, and ‘Mindful’ Consumers: Rehabilitating the Zombie in Twenty-First-Century Popular Culture Chapter 8: Networks, Desire, and Risk Management in Gay Contagion Fiction Chapter 9: This Long Disease, My Life:’ AIDS Activism and Contagious Bodies in Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me Chapter 10: The Epidemic of History: Contagion of the Past in the Era of the Never-Ending Present ‘Contagion Contagion’: Viral Metaphors, Lockdown and Suffering Economies in the COVID-19 Pandemic Bibliography