Plague, Pestilence, Pandemic: Keywords for a Cultural Epidemiology of the Present

• Authors: Djelal Kadir

Abstracts

EN

The Covid 19 era presents yet another instance of the symbiosis between viral pandemic and pestilence in the political culture of the moment. Through a brief reprise of plague-riven history dating from antiquity, this article explores the symptoms of the current epidemic and offers a number of keywords that characterize the current maladies as viral plague and as political pestilence. The coupling of the viral and the political dates from the third century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius who took the measure of the plague and political corruption of Rome during his reign. The lexical compendium offered here could constitute a study in cultural epidemiology that defines the exhibited symptoms of pandemic disease in its concurrent medical and socio-cultural manifestations.

Keywords

EN

aetiology; anthropogenic; viral; catastrophe; iconoclasm; epidemic; pandemic; pandemonium; symptomatology; contagion; war; truth; prevarication; facticity; immunity; impunity; simulation; dissimulation; haptic; chronic; algorithms; implosion; syndrome; mask; masquerade

• Publisher: University of Silesia Press
• Journal: Review of International American Studies
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 67-88

Dates

published

2023

Contributors

author

Djelal Kadir

• Pennsylvania State University, USA

• https://orcid.org/0000000239273167

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Identifiers

DOI

10.31261/rias.15861

Biblioteka Nauki

35192085