INFECTIOUS ENTANGLEMENTS Literary and Medical Representations of Disease in the Post/Colonial Caribbean by Shalini H. N. Khan A
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INFECTIOUS ENTANGLEMENTS Literary and Medical Representations of Disease in the Post/Colonial Caribbean by Shalini H. N. Khan A Thesis Submitted to the Department of English in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada November 2010 Copyright © Shalini H. N. Khan, 2010 i Abstract This study engages with select disease narratives of the Anglophone Caribbean through the lens of post/colonial theory, cultural criticism and the social history of medicine. Focusing on the biological image and metaphor of infection, as opposed to its more popular associations with hybridity and creolization in post/colonial theory, I argue that disease discourses facilitate more complex iterations of identity than the less dynamic, more static categories of ‘race’ (black versus white), cultural affiliation (British, Indian, African or West Indian) or political identity (coloniser versus colonised) and propose a theory of infectious entanglements, by which I demonstrate and interrogate complex and transphenomenal representations of West Indian identity across ‘racial’, cultural and political boundaries. Primary texts include eighteenth- and nineteenth- century medical tracts on leprosy and tropical fevers; contemporary medical and cultural texts on HIV/AIDS; and works of fiction by writers such as Harold Sonny Ladoo (Trinidad/Canada), Frieda Cassin (Britain/Antigua) Lawrence Scott (Trinidad/Britain) and Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua/United States). My literary, cultural and historical analyses of biological representations of leprosy, tropical fever and HIV/AIDS suggest that each disease facilitated the construction of multiple cordons sanitaires, whose conceptual boundaries intersected and overlapped in different ways. These points of entanglement, I demonstrate, are useful sites for interrogating post/colonial constructions of identity in light of the relative fluidity of some boundaries (such as changing ideas about who is infectious and who can become infected, as with HIV/AIDS and leprosy) and the hardening lines of others (such as intersecting ideas about tropical fever, pathogenic environments and the emergence of ii medical cartography). More importantly, such intersections sometimes revealed the entanglement of medicine and other organs of post/colonial authority in past and ongoing othering projects and their legitimising roles in the articulation of essential difference. This dissertation is divided into three parts, each focusing on a particular disease that is iconic in post/colonial narratives about the Caribbean. Part 1 focuses on leprosy, Part 2 on tropical fever and Part 3, framed as a conclusion to this study, focuses on contemporary narratives of HIV/AIDS in the context of earlier narratives of leprosy and tropical fevers. iii Acknowledgements I owe debts of gratitude to the many persons who have supported me in different ways during the preparation of this dissertation. In particular my supervisor, Chris Bongie, offered expert advice and cheerful encouragement from the conceptual stages of this project through its completion. His meticulous editing and timely, insightful commentary have contributed to improving the quality of this work. Jazz and Payal opened their homes to me on my various visits to Queen’s and, along with other friends in Kingston, Vancouver and Trinidad, offered support, camaraderie and delightful diversions to make the dissertation process all the more enjoyable. My family’s support has been unstinting. Their interest in my work and their pride in my achievements have been humbling and uplifting. While Clare did not see this project to its completion, her quiet, steady support continues to inspire me. In particular, Steven has been my constant with whom I have been at home as our geographies and identities shifted over time. Out of our many conversations spawned several early ideas that eventually evolved into some of the conceptual metaphors I use in this project. His love, friendship, sense of humour, intelligence and generosity of spirit have sustained me. Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, Kheeria and Narine: “islands can only exist/ If we have loved in them.” Thank you for inspiring in me a passion for learning and books and for your unconditional love and support across the years. iv Table of Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements iii Chapter 1: Introduction Infectious Entanglements and Representations of Disease 1 Part 1: Leprosy Chapter 2: ‘The Disgrace of Art’: Representing Leprosy in Pre-Emancipation Medical Texts 24 Chapter 3: Out of Place: Lepers and Leprosy in Frieda Cassin’s With Silent Tread 60 Chapter 4: Leprosy and Ruins in Lawrence Scott’s Night Calypso 100 Conclusion to Part 1 136 Part 2: Tropical Fever Chapter 5: ‘The Disease Most Fatal to Europeans’: Tropical Fever in James Lind’s An Essay on Diseases Incidental to Europeans in Hot Climates 138 Chapter 6: Fever and Anti-Myth in Harold Sonny Ladoo’s No Pain Like This Body 175 Conclusion to Part 2 215 Part 3: HIV/AIDS Chapter 7: This ‘chupidness’: Representing HIV/AIDS in Jamaica Kincaid’s My Brother 219 Works Cited 258 1 Chapter 1 Infectious Entanglements and Representations of Disease A late nineteenth-century wood engraving titled A Mosquito Curtain for the Soldier’s Rest depicts a recumbent soldier in a tropical forest with a mosquito net over his head. The details of the image are noteworthy: it is dark; the soldier is alone; he is prostrate on the ground; trees and other plants loom over his resting figure, creating a strange and threatening environment that leaves him in a vulnerable state. The mosquito net, however, protects him from an insidious danger: the hidden mosquitoes that would feed on the unsuspecting and the unprepared. Acting as a barrier between the tropical forest - a pathogenic space according to nineteenth-century medicine - and the soldier - a representative of colonial order and discipline - the net demarcates safe and unsafe spaces and defines the boundaries of order and disorder in the context of colonial narratives that represent the tropics as wild and unruly and in need of being tamed. Order-making imperatives and ideas about vulnerability are prominent themes in my study of representations of leprosy, tropical fever and HIV/AIDS in the Anglophone Caribbean - a study that ranges over time from pre-emancipation medical tracts to post/colonial literary texts that include works of fiction and a memoir. Focusing on representations of disease as biological phenomena rather than on disease as a metaphor for other concerns,1 I argue that disease narratives facilitate more complex iterations of 1 While Caribbean and other writers have meaningfully appropriated images and metaphors about biological disease in non-biological contexts - Derek Walcott’s invocation of “the leprosy of empire” (l 10) in his poem “Ruins of a Great House” is a case in point - in this study I focus on metaphors of disease only as far as they remain connected to the original image of biological infection, while also tracking the manner in which such metaphors sometimes leak into a more general discourse that associates epidemiological trends with essentialist biological and/or cultural characteristics. 2 identity than less dynamic categories of ‘race’ (black versus white), cultural affiliation (British, Indian, African or West Indian) or political identity (coloniser versus colonised). This study is an attempt to engage with select disease narratives of the Anglophone Caribbean through the lens of post/colonial2 theory and cultural criticism for what they might reveal about hitherto understudied aspects of colonial and post-colonial experience in a manner that does not privilege the psychological legacy of colonialism over its material effects, in this case, the disease experiences of Caribbean peoples.3 Representing Disease The sustained and cohesive representations of illness that I will be referring to as ‘disease narratives’ emerge out of a network of cultural values and beliefs that ascribe meaning to phenomena such as infirmity, death, madness and physical deformity.4 2 The term post/colonial in this study draws attention to the uneasy and awkward entanglement of pre and post independence narratives associated with the former British West Indian colonies and is indebted to Chris Bongie’s invocation of the term in his introduction to Islands and Exiles: The Creole Identities of Post/Colonial Literature. I use the term post-colonial in this study to refer solely to the historical period after independence. 3 The colonial experiment in the Caribbean resulted in complex varieties of racial intermixing, land clearing, geographic re-settlement and new disease experiences. Alongside the highly theorized political and cultural legacies of colonialism there exist whole categories of experiences that require a different theoretical focus, such as on biological or environmental phenomena, as recent trends in eco-criticism, animal studies, and disability studies have begun to provide. My focus on post/colonial disease narratives is another such attempt to contribute to current conversations on the post/colonial Caribbean by focusing on the role of disease narratives in constructions of Caribbean identity. 4 Medical anthropologists such as Peter Morley, for example, argue that systems of medicine are culture based and grounded in the belief systems of a particular community. For Morley, this is also true for Western biomedicine (what Morley calls Western allopathic