Layers of epidemy: Present pasts during the first weeks of COVID-19 in western Kenya
Layers of epidemy: Present pasts during the first weeks of COVID-19 in western Kenya
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DOI：
10.1111/1600-0498.12295
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发表时间：
2020-05-01
期刊：
影响因子：
1.2
通讯作者：
Prince, Ruth J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Geissler, P. Wenzel;Prince, Ruth J.
COVID-19的流行似乎正在重塑世界，将之前和之后，现在和过去分开。它被认为是新奇的，这就提出了一个问题，即过去在当前的流行病及其应对中可能发挥什么作用。我们认为，过去并没有过去，而是存在于物质和非物质的残余中，并不断从这些残余中浮现出来。我们认为，过去不应该作为封闭的叙述来研究，而应该通过它的一系列痕迹来研究，这些痕迹构成了现在的纹理。为此，在对肯尼亚西部过去和现在的流行病进行长期人种学研究的基础上，我们在这里收集了一些关于肯尼亚COVID-19最初几周的初步观察结果。我们将探讨当前正在展开的严重流行病危机是如何与早期流行病事件的分层碎片交织在一起的，涉及物质基础设施、制度实践和仪式反应，涉及携带病毒的尸体、药物及其残留物的存在，以及经常痛苦的记忆和情绪的复苏。本区域人民经历了一个漫长的世纪，期间和强度各不相同，从殖民时期和后殖民时期的昏睡病和天花到艾滋病毒/艾滋病和最近的癌症，以及实际或预期爆发的霍乱和埃博拉。这种当地人对一场长期流行病的看法，符合了在欧洲对话中经常与COVID-19大流行联系在一起的彻底暂时中断的概念。
The epidemic of COVID-19 appears to be reshaping the world, separating before and after, present and past. Its perceived novelty raises the question of what role the past might play in the present epidemic and in responses to it. Taking the view that the past has not passed, but is present in is material and immaterial remains, and continuously emerging from these, we argue that it should not be studied as closed narration but through the array of its traces, which constitute the texture of the present. To that end, and building on long-term ethnographic research on past and present epidemics in western Kenya, we assemble here some preliminary observations on the first weeks of COVID-19 in Kenya. We explore how the acute epidemic crisis currently unfolding is intertwined with layered fragments of earlier epidemic events, attending to material infrastructures, institutional practices, and ritual responses, to the presence of virally loaded bodies, pharmaceuticals, and their residues, and to the resurgence of often painful memories and emotions. People in this region have experienced a long century of epidemics and anti-epidemic measures of varying duration and intensity, from colonial and postcolonial sleeping sickness and smallpox to HIV/AIDS and more recently cancer, alongside actual or anticipated outbreaks of cholera and Ebola. This local perception of one long epidemic qualifies the notion of a radical temporal break that the COVID-19 pandemic is often associated with in European conversations.