Doktori (PhD) értekezés Cultures of Pollution: Epidemic Disease and the Biopolitics of Contagion in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction Ureczky Eszter Debreceni Egyetem BTK 2017 CULTURES OF POLLUTION: EPIDEMIC DISEASE AND THE BIOPOLITICS OF CONTAGION IN CONTEMPORARY ANGLOPHONE FICTION Értekezés a doktori (Ph.D.) fokozat megszerzése érdekében az irodalomtudományok tudományágban Írta: Ureczky Eszter, okleveles magyar-angol szakos bölcsész és tanár Készült a Debreceni Egyetem Irodalomtudományok Doktori Iskolája (Angol-amerikai irodalomtudományi programja) keretében …………………………… Témavezető: Dr. Bényei Tamás A doktori szigorlati bizottság: elnök: Dr. ………………………… tagok: Dr. ………………………… Dr. ………………………… A doktori szigorlat időpontja: 201… . ……………… … . Az értekezés bírálói: Dr. ........................................... Dr. …………………………… Dr. ........................................... A bírálóbizottság: elnök: Dr. ........................................... tagok: Dr. ………………………….. Dr. ………………………….. Dr. ………………………….. Dr. ………………………….. A nyilvános vita időpontja: 201... ……………. .... ii Én, Ureczky Eszter, teljes felelősségem tudatában kijelentem, hogy a benyújtott értekezés önálló munka, a szerzői jog nemzetközi normáinak tiszteletben tartásával készült, a benne található irodalmi hivatkozások egyértelműek és teljesek. Nem állok doktori fokozat visszavonására irányuló eljárás alatt, illetve 5 éven belül nem vontak vissza tőlem odaítélt doktori fokozatot. Jelen értekezést korábban más intézményben nem nyújtottam be és azt nem utasították el. …..……………………………… iii Acknowledgements The eight-year research synthesised in this doctoral dissertation is both a symptom of and a therapy for a personal and professional engagement with the dilemmas of embodiment and health. Most of all, I thank Professor Tamás Bényei, my supervisor, for supporting me during this long work process and contributing to its completion in more ways than I could count. iv Table of Contents I. Introduction: Disease as the Voice of the Organs ................................................... 1 Health, disease, epidemic ................................................................................................. 17 Pollution, othering, urban space ........................................................................................ 22 Biopower, death, precariousness ....................................................................................... 27 II. The Marks of the Black Death: Plague and the Birth of the Modern Biopolitical Body in Wiliam Owen Roberts’ Pestilence and Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders ................................................................................................................... 32 Plague as a non-dead metaphor of disorder in Western cultural history..................... 33 States of emergency and the subversion of medieval world order in Pestilence .......... 38 Grotesque bodies and somatic metaphors of pollution ................................................... 38 The dark continent: cultural otherness and episodemic fragmentation ........................... 47 Economies of the plague ............................................................................................... 53 Disciplining the Plague: Quarantine and the Cunning Woman in Year of Wonders ... 57 Early modern plague culture and the heritage of Eyam .................................................. 59 The quarantine as a camp .............................................................................................. 61 Wicked witch or cunning woman? ................................................................................ 66 Medieval and early modern images of plague ............................................................... 71 III. Cleanliness as Godliness: Cholera, Colonisation and Victorian Spaces of Pollution in Matthew Kneale's Sweet Thames and Anne Roiphe’s An Imperfect Lens ......................................................................................................................... 74 Cholera as the filth disease of 19th-century imperialism ............................................... 75 Victorian Spaces and Waste Management in Matthew Kneale's Sweet Thames .......... 79 An imperial epidemic and Victorian notions of abjection .............................................. 82 Polluted Exchanges: Economic Metaphors .................................................................... 88 Sexual politics: incest, prostitution, hysteria .................................................................. 93 Imperialism and the Microscopic Gaze in An Imperfect Lens .................................... 100 The blind city: the filth of Alexandria ......................................................................... 102 The scramble for the microbe: the French against the Germans ................................... 107 The Jew as homo sacer: pogrom and pollution ............................................................ 112 19th-century images of cholera ..................................................................................... 114 v IV. Anti-Bodies in London: AIDS and the Aestheticized Spaces of Immunity in Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty and Alfred Corn’s Part of His Story ............. 116 (Homo)sexual identities and the cultural spaces of AIDS ........................................... 118 A Disturbing Guest: Pharmakos, Immunity and Elitism in The Line of Beauty ........ 122 The somato-spatial politics of the pharmakos .............................................................. 123 The lost young men of the 80s: immunity and the containing of otherness .................. 133 The art of decadent consumption: the aesthetics of AIDS ............................................ 139 An American in London: Monumentalization in Alfred Corn’s Part of His Story .... 145 Part of history: personal and collective narratives ........................................................ 146 The survivor’s sense of continuity: London as a memorial .......................................... 147 The loss of the other/self ............................................................................................. 151 Images of AIDS ............................................................................................................. 155 V. Conclusion: Regarding the Disease of Others ..................................................... 157 VI. Bibliography ......................................................................................................... 167 vi List of Illustrations Fig. 1. Canada-Hopkins, Angela. Cell No. 6. 2012. Angela Canada-Hopkins. Web. 5 July 2017. https://angelacanadahopkins.com/original-artwork/cell-no6 Fig. 2: Lieferinxe, Josse. Saint Sebastian Interceding for the Plague Stricken. c. 1497. Wikimedia. Web. 10 July 2017. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Josse_Lieferinxe__Saint_Sebastian_Interced ing_for_the_Plague_Stricken_-_Walters_371995.jpg Fig. 3: Crivelli, Carlo. St Roch. 1493. Pinterest. Web. 10 July 2017. https://hu.pinterest.com/pin/287386019947601809/ Fig. 4: Bruegel, Pieter the Elder. The Triumph of Death. c. 1562. Wikimedia. Web. 10 July 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triumph_of_Death Fig. 5: Grünewald, Matthias. The Temptation of Saint Anthony. c. 1512. Artsy. Web. 10 July 2017. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/matthias-grunewald-the-temptation-of-saint-anthony Fig. 6: N.a. The Great Plague of 1665. c. 1665. BBC. Web. 10 July 2017. http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160906-plague-pits-the-london-underground-and- crossrail Fig. 7: N.a. The Great Plague of London. 1666. Pinterest. Web. 10 July 2017. https://hu.pinterest.com/pin/509258670343189453/ Fig. 8: N.a. Bills of Mortalty. 1665. Pinterest. Web. 10 July 2017. https://hu.pinterest.com/pin/287386019944367236/ Fig. 9: N.a. A plague doctors’s advertismemet. c. 1665. Pinterest. Web. 10 July 2017. https://hu.pinterest.com/pin/287386019943114580/ Fig. 10: N.a. A plague doctor. c. 1656. Wikimedia. Web. 10 July 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_doctor Fig. 11: N.a. A plague pit. N.d. Pinterest. Web. 10 July 2017. https://hu.pinterest.com/pin/230739180881382254/ Fig. 12: Blake, William. Pestilence. c. 1805. Wikimedia. Web. 10 July 2017. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blake_Pestilence_c1805_Pen_and_watercol or_Museum_of_Fine_Arts_Boston.jpg Fig. 13: Böcklin, Arnold. Plague. 1898. Pinterest. Web. 10 July 2017. vii https://hu.pinterest.com/pin/559361216195407255/ Fig. 14: N.a. An Eyam postcard. N.d. Herringthorpe Junior School. Web. 10 July 2017. https://herringthorpejuniors.com/2013/10/24/eyam-the-plague-village/ Fig. 15: Légaré, Joseph. Le choléra à Québec. 1832. Pinterest. Web. 17 July 2017. https://hu.pinterest.com/pin/537124693039724541/ Fig. 16: N.a. Death bringing cholera. 1912. Le Petit Journal. Wikimedia. Web 17 July 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera#/media/File:Cholera.jpg Fig. 17: N.a. March of Russian barbarity and cholera to Europe. N.d. Wikimedia. Web. 17 July 2017. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:March_of_Russian_barbarity_and_cholera_ epidemic_to_Europe_(French_allegory).PNG Fig. 18: N.a. Cholera preservative woman. N.d. Alamy. Web. 17 July 2017. https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-medicine-diseases-cholera-caricature-protection- against-contamination-33347107.html Fig. 19: N.a. A young Venetian woman, aged 23, before and after the cholera. N.d. Branch Collective. Web. 17 July 2017. http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=pamela-k-gilbert-on-cholera-in- nineteenth-century-england