Abstract
Bollinger argues that contagion narratives tend to replicate cultural assumptions about gender and embodiment to the degree they commit to what she calls the “epidemic model.” She uses Katherine Anne Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” (written shortly after the Spanish Flu virus was identified) as an archetype of this epidemic model. The chapter then reveals an alternative model of disease representation, which Bollinger terms the “endemic model.” This framework, she argues, constructs microbes as contributing to human biological/cultural evolution in positive ways. Narratives that follow this model, therefore, are capable of depicting the germ-incubating human body in ways that shirk traditional gender norms in showcasing all bodies—male and female—as spaces of productive gestation. In illustrating her point, she traces science fiction epidemic and endemic germ narratives from Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague (1912) and Harriet Stark’s The Bacillus of Beauty (1900) to the present, including Richard Matheson, Sandra Newman, Joan Slonczewski, and Greg Bear.
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Bollinger, L. (2016). Figuring the Other Within: The Gendered Underpinnings of Germ Narratives. In: Nixon, K., Servitje, L. (eds) Endemic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52141-5_11
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