Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb. Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror, 1817–2020.

Abstract

Over recent decades, many social inconveniences have become known as epidemics. But when, where, and how does something become framed as epidemic, and what does it mean for the spread of ideas, of violence, of fashion trends, or of diseases to become objects of epidemiological concern? Important reflective work on the meaning of epidemic has been carried out beyond the narrow disciplinary bounds of formal epidemiology. Charles Rosenberg’s seminal framing of epidemics through the narrative arc of drama theory, or Paula Treichler’s idiom of the “epidemic of signification” have not only shaped historical and critical approaches but also substantiated that neither the epidemic itself, nor its critical appraisal, should ever be solely a medical matter. It is one of the outstanding achievements of Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb’s Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror, 1817–2020 to not only deepen and continue this academic legacy but also to turn it on its head. Much has been written about the origin of epidemiology in colonial regimens of power, on the techniques of epidemiological surveillance stemming from the bureaucracy of imperial practices, and about the not-so-noble origins of global health. But Epidemic Empire is not concerned with the metaphorical residues of colonialism in epidemiological reasoning (or vice versa), but rather invites the reader to read the history of colonialism “epidemiologically.” This does not mean to eschew the brutal participation of epidemiologists in the violence of settler colonialism but renders effectively—and rightfully—the empire into an epidemiological matter of concern.