Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England

by Jonathan Gil Harris

This book examines the overlap between early modern English attitudes to disease and to society and explores the cultural meaning of the image of the body at the interfaces of medicine, morality and politics in Tudor and early Stuart England. In particular, it demonstrates how the body politic's metaphorical "cankers" and "plagues" were increasingly attributed to allegedly pathological "foreign bodies" such as Jews, Catholics, and witches. One can glimpse the origins of not only modern xenophobic attitudes to foreigners as carriers of disease, but also "germ" theory in general. The pathological and the political thus have a long-standing, problematic, and mostly neglected relationship, the prehistory of which this book seeks to uncover.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Onnesha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I read all year. Seriously. Requires some pre-reading coffee to maintain the focus (Can we get some better editors for academics?) but it's well worth the patience. Traces the parallel evolution of concepts of disease and nationhood through the early modern period. And helps open your eyes to current retardation in conceptualizing nation state borders and disease (AIDS came from them Africans, right?) Reminded me of Bruno Latour's We Have Never Been Modern.

[Julaine]

ISIS Cummulative Bibliography 1998

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really excellent text for reference.