1 00:00:11,630 --> 00:00:17,180 Hello, welcome to the project, How Epidemics and which is based at the University of Oxford. 2 00:00:17,180 --> 00:00:25,820 I'm Kristin Heitman. And with me today are Dornberger and Arthur Rose to talk about the nature and the power of epidemic narratives. 3 00:00:25,820 --> 00:00:33,440 Dorries, professor of history and medical humanities at the University of Exeter in the U.K. She works primarily in the history of epidemics, 4 00:00:33,440 --> 00:00:43,010 the politics of health and Cold War history, from the politics of epidemic management to public health systems and access to therapeutics. 5 00:00:43,010 --> 00:00:48,470 Arthur is a post-doctoral research fellow in English at the University of Exeter, where he works with Lunine, 6 00:00:48,470 --> 00:00:59,940 Dolezal and the Wellcome Trust funded Shame and Medicine Project and HRC r.i project Seeds of Shame and Stigma and covid-19. 7 00:00:59,940 --> 00:01:07,320 He's particularly interested, interested in questions of narrative, emotion and philosophy of history and literary scholarship. 8 00:01:07,320 --> 00:01:18,440 Welcome to both of you. So this interview is part of a long running conversation, primarily between Arthur and Dorothy. 9 00:01:18,440 --> 00:01:28,470 I've been privileged to be part of recently about the nature of narrative and history and and now in particular about epidemics. 10 00:01:28,470 --> 00:01:30,780 So like many others who've discussed epidemic narratives, 11 00:01:30,780 --> 00:01:35,670 we decided to take as our jumping off point the model first broached by this story of medicine. 12 00:01:35,670 --> 00:01:40,380 Charles Rosenberg, Bertha Endure. How would you characterise that model? 13 00:01:40,380 --> 00:01:44,760 Industry scholarship? We tend to start by going back to the text. 14 00:01:44,760 --> 00:01:47,520 So I'm going to just read, I think, 15 00:01:47,520 --> 00:01:56,910 one of the potentially the most important lines from Rosenberg's piece for how we think about the model of the epidemic. 16 00:01:56,910 --> 00:02:03,690 Rosenberg writes, Epidemics start at a point in time, proceed on a stage limited in space and duration, 17 00:02:03,690 --> 00:02:14,070 follow a plotline of increasing and revelatory tension, move to a crisis of individual and collective character, and then drift towards closure. 18 00:02:14,070 --> 00:02:20,430 Now, I think it's worth remarking on the distinction that a literary scholar would make between closure 19 00:02:20,430 --> 00:02:28,200 and ending because whereas ending is when something comes to a stop and a kind of external sense, 20 00:02:28,200 --> 00:02:38,770 closure is much more to do with the expectations than questions that an audience brings to a dramatic piece. 21 00:02:38,770 --> 00:02:47,010 Obviously, drama and modern drama particularly is often as much about the absence of closure as it is about closure, per say. 22 00:02:47,010 --> 00:02:58,770 But it's worth remembering, and I take the work of Albert Porter or Tabit as my starting point that closure is very 23 00:02:58,770 --> 00:03:12,450 much about resolving your expectations and answering any as yet unanswered questions and. 24 00:03:12,450 --> 00:03:27,330 What is I think, maybe support stories point about the fact that endings often don't unravel historically as neatly as Rozenberg maybe portrays them, 25 00:03:27,330 --> 00:03:37,650 is that in addition to that, the reason why they don't unravel in these kind of easy ways isn't just because of the external historical factors, 26 00:03:37,650 --> 00:03:47,850 but also because the people involved are often left with unresolved expectations and unresolved questions. 27 00:03:47,850 --> 00:03:50,700 I think there are two things to consider here. 28 00:03:50,700 --> 00:04:03,720 One is, is the point that that he makes in other other other pieces that he's written, that epidemics serve as a sampling device, 29 00:04:03,720 --> 00:04:13,710 as a window into seeing things going on in society and politics and culture that we wouldn't otherwise see. 30 00:04:13,710 --> 00:04:18,060 And and that is that remains, I think, a very strong point. 31 00:04:18,060 --> 00:04:31,770 However, I think that this overarching narrative and imagining epidemics as a as a as a plague that that goes through acts in the particular sequence, 32 00:04:31,770 --> 00:04:38,280 brings up certain issues in this case, particularly with with the ending. 33 00:04:38,280 --> 00:04:46,530 And I think through this problematise the ending and how we might think about models and what models, not just the Rosenbergs, 34 00:04:46,530 --> 00:04:56,350 but more in general can reveal about endings, can then help us rethink what epidemics are in the first place and how they play out. 35 00:04:56,350 --> 00:05:06,760 So one of the interesting things that actually each of you said in other conversations is that the responses to Rosenberg's model, 36 00:05:06,760 --> 00:05:18,670 that one has really reflect one's own priorities and so that the objections to the model tend to be in part about one's own expectations, 37 00:05:18,670 --> 00:05:28,060 about what a model ought to accomplish in terms of describing what a narrative looks like and in particular, what an epidemic narrative looks like. 38 00:05:28,060 --> 00:05:31,700 Do you want to comment on that a little bit? 39 00:05:31,700 --> 00:05:40,890 I would like to know that into with something that Arthur just mentioned, and this is why I find our conversation so fruitful, 40 00:05:40,890 --> 00:05:46,740 because there are always very constructive overlaps, but also disagreements encoded in this. 41 00:05:46,740 --> 00:05:55,170 And I think that reflects our priorities from coming from our disciplines and some of our personal interests as well that are folded into this. 42 00:05:55,170 --> 00:06:06,630 And I'd like to go back to to what you said earlier about modern drama and and how I find that really useful as a as a vehicle to really think about. 43 00:06:06,630 --> 00:06:15,660 OK, this is this is not necessarily a model. A dramaturgy like the dramaturge itself is already problematic. 44 00:06:15,660 --> 00:06:20,130 And it can be problematise in that way. And I find that useful, too, 45 00:06:20,130 --> 00:06:29,910 to think about what is modern trauma to what kind of actors and tensions and and and taking a part of conventions it's working with. 46 00:06:29,910 --> 00:06:37,410 And we can utilise to rethink how we tell a story and a narrative in a historical sense. 47 00:06:37,410 --> 00:06:41,750 But I would also push back against this distinction between I. 48 00:06:41,750 --> 00:06:46,860 I completely agree that I think the distinction between ending and closure is important. 49 00:06:46,860 --> 00:06:54,660 But coming from a historical perspective, I think that they collapse into each other more easily. 50 00:06:54,660 --> 00:07:03,390 And what I mean by this is that the external and the personal are not not divisive in this sense, 51 00:07:03,390 --> 00:07:10,950 because the ending then what what ending might mean is, 52 00:07:10,950 --> 00:07:22,050 is what you would term as closure when the says that this epidemic has ended or when a state is no longer governments are no longer invested in it, 53 00:07:22,050 --> 00:07:30,690 or there's a medical research stops giving it a high priority and so on and so forth. 54 00:07:30,690 --> 00:07:40,140 And that comes together with the fact that closure as such on a very personal and individual level also comes, may come. 55 00:07:40,140 --> 00:07:48,720 And, you know, historically, we can see that it does come very different times for very different actors if if we want to use that term. 56 00:07:48,720 --> 00:07:58,500 So there is a complexity here that that that ending as something external is very much embedded with the closure. 57 00:07:58,500 --> 00:08:07,020 And there can be various expressions of this, like a commemoration of an epidemic, thinking about plate columns, 58 00:08:07,020 --> 00:08:15,240 for instance, in the 18th century, that's replicate something into the past, both on a social level, on a cultural level. 59 00:08:15,240 --> 00:08:17,760 It has very strong political meanings. 60 00:08:17,760 --> 00:08:32,130 And and that, you know, that that is that is an act of creating that closure that that may or may not be overlapped with the ending itself. 61 00:08:32,130 --> 00:08:36,000 So that's I think that's that's where my interest is coming into it, 62 00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:41,970 of what is belonging to that, who's making that decision, who is propelling these endings? 63 00:08:41,970 --> 00:08:46,890 Who is propelling the way that the model is, the way that the story is being told, 64 00:08:46,890 --> 00:08:52,380 what kind of stories being told and who gets included into that and who doesn't? 65 00:08:52,380 --> 00:08:59,190 I feel that the what kind of narratives we have to create make sense of what has happened. 66 00:08:59,190 --> 00:09:07,590 And making sense is telling the story of what had gone before and how did we get to where we are right now. 67 00:09:07,590 --> 00:09:11,700 So very broadly speaking, and that can be told in many ways. 68 00:09:11,700 --> 00:09:17,610 It can be interpreted in many ways that the the facts and the events that are happening, 69 00:09:17,610 --> 00:09:23,160 it depends on who we are looking at, what kind of actors we're taking into account. 70 00:09:23,160 --> 00:09:27,450 And there can be parallel narratives going on at the same time. 71 00:09:27,450 --> 00:09:37,110 But one makes, I think, particularly historical. What is important from a historical perspective is that all this narrative and the kind of 72 00:09:37,110 --> 00:09:43,140 the way that we are making sense of it is bound by the sources that we use in our research. 73 00:09:43,140 --> 00:09:51,300 So the documents that have been produced, the people who have, you know, whose stories we can access, and there are a lot of ways to do it. 74 00:09:51,300 --> 00:09:57,060 And that that gives an explanation of the varied narratives that that are going on. 75 00:09:57,060 --> 00:10:07,490 But it is bound by that by that very material side of of the of the story. 76 00:10:07,490 --> 00:10:11,770 What do you see as being characteristic of. 77 00:10:11,770 --> 00:10:19,560 Historical narratives differ somehow from literary ones, if they do or insofar as they do. 78 00:10:19,560 --> 00:10:32,390 I mean, it's a very easy way of answering that question, which is that ultimately. 79 00:10:32,390 --> 00:10:35,430 The relationship to their. 80 00:10:35,430 --> 00:10:44,240 Which is to say, when you're talking about an actual epidemic, historical epidemic, you're talking about actual people who have died. 81 00:10:44,240 --> 00:11:02,030 And no matter how. Responsive to an actual historical figure, a literary narrative will be the death in literature is always a fictional death. 82 00:11:02,030 --> 00:11:09,710 And and I think it's partly one of the great. 83 00:11:09,710 --> 00:11:15,760 Privileges of my conversation, Torah that we always. 84 00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:24,100 When when I get too excited about models and narrative modes and and things like that, 85 00:11:24,100 --> 00:11:31,240 she pulls me back with the fact that we're talking about real people in the world who have lived in the world, 86 00:11:31,240 --> 00:11:38,980 who suffered in the world and who have died in the world. That's Ed. 87 00:11:38,980 --> 00:11:46,270 It is to concede a little too much to historians, for the literary scholar to always say, well, 88 00:11:46,270 --> 00:11:56,200 we just look at fiction and put up their hands and say, oh, well, you know, it's like, of course, we're not talking about the real world. 89 00:11:56,200 --> 00:12:06,630 And I think that's the case for two reasons, which is that if one thinks of. 90 00:12:06,630 --> 00:12:16,800 The distinction between the activity of of of of artefacts or things we study in the humanities 91 00:12:16,800 --> 00:12:24,540 along the lines of a distinction that that John Guillory makes between monuments and documents, 92 00:12:24,540 --> 00:12:29,340 wherein a monument may talk about an actual statue or something like that. 93 00:12:29,340 --> 00:12:37,080 But it but it can equally be a novel or something, a fact in the world or something like that. 94 00:12:37,080 --> 00:12:47,010 And you think about documents then is the extreme of textual apparatus that respond to that monument. 95 00:12:47,010 --> 00:12:56,220 Then one can start to think about the ways that particular works, although there may be works of fiction, 96 00:12:56,220 --> 00:13:08,040 have exerted their own pull and influence and and locus of gravity on the way that material historical facts have played themselves out. 97 00:13:08,040 --> 00:13:15,510 And in this respect, we might return to Rozenberg and think of Rosenbergs, which is the second point that I'm making. 98 00:13:15,510 --> 00:13:23,370 Rosenberg's model not simply as an explanation of epidemics, as the title of this book suggests, 99 00:13:23,370 --> 00:13:31,650 but also has a particularly influential model for how people think that they need to live through an epidemic. 100 00:13:31,650 --> 00:13:41,520 Now, in that sense, when a model presents the the the span of an epidemic is something that gradually unfolds 101 00:13:41,520 --> 00:13:49,590 and then has a moment of crisis and then comes to a kind of point of closure or ending. 102 00:13:49,590 --> 00:14:03,600 One is less likely to be sensitive to the fact that epidemics as they pulled out unfolded in historically, I've never really followed the model. 103 00:14:03,600 --> 00:14:07,620 They've always been more complicated than that model allows. 104 00:14:07,620 --> 00:14:11,280 I mean, one just needs to think of the Spanish influenza and the fact that there were 105 00:14:11,280 --> 00:14:20,310 three waves to as a as a as a sample of why a model that is overly linear, 106 00:14:20,310 --> 00:14:28,800 overly emphasising, emphasises, I believe, the traditional curve that the door, 107 00:14:28,800 --> 00:14:38,310 the door sketched out for us earlier is is going to be is going to set up unreasonable expectations. 108 00:14:38,310 --> 00:14:44,460 Which brings us back to this kind of question of closure as the resolution of a set of expectations. 109 00:14:44,460 --> 00:14:50,070 And I would I would just add to that that this is where I think it really matters why, you know, 110 00:14:50,070 --> 00:15:01,530 how we think about literary narratives and historical narratives and how we tell the stories of the past or how we we think about dramaturgy models, 111 00:15:01,530 --> 00:15:05,400 because this is you know, it makes for a very interesting academic conversation. 112 00:15:05,400 --> 00:15:13,800 As Arthur and I have know, there's a reason why we've been we've been having these conversations or for for a while now. 113 00:15:13,800 --> 00:15:19,680 But there is a real stake in this. And just, you know, picking up on what what Arthur was saying, 114 00:15:19,680 --> 00:15:26,490 that that the way that we perceive the epidemic narrative, the way that we perceive these models, 115 00:15:26,490 --> 00:15:29,490 maybe maybe epidemiological models, you know, 116 00:15:29,490 --> 00:15:41,550 that that get folded into this story or the or the narratives that people tell about their own individual illness, which may cause frustrations. 117 00:15:41,550 --> 00:15:45,840 I've had covid, you know, why am I still struggling with this? It's supposed to be over. 118 00:15:45,840 --> 00:15:50,850 And but then, you know, it has also other real stakes. 119 00:15:50,850 --> 00:15:54,270 And, you know, what do we understand as an ending? 120 00:15:54,270 --> 00:16:05,040 What how do we construct that closure if the ending is no more cases or very little cases or not enough cases to create a public health concern? 121 00:16:05,040 --> 00:16:13,410 You know, if that is where where an epidemic ends, then what happens to the people who are not experiencing it on that timeline? 122 00:16:13,410 --> 00:16:18,960 What happens to the if that's that's if we're following that narrative as a as a 123 00:16:18,960 --> 00:16:26,520 government or as a world international organisation or as a narrower community, 124 00:16:26,520 --> 00:16:32,910 you know, what is that? What is the work that's that the narrative is doing? 125 00:16:32,910 --> 00:16:40,410 And I think we need to be just conscious of that, that there is it is doing very, very real and palpable work. 126 00:16:40,410 --> 00:16:45,840 And in how we're drawing imagined narratives, 127 00:16:45,840 --> 00:16:57,840 may that be historical or fictional of of past epidemics and how we're using that to to make sense of what's going on right now. 128 00:16:57,840 --> 00:17:05,100 And it's just that that action that I think it needs to be we need to be aware that that is part of what we're doing. 129 00:17:05,100 --> 00:17:11,940 We are telling it's not an objective thing that we're living through that plays out in a certain way. 130 00:17:11,940 --> 00:17:19,080 We are participating and creating that story. I hope this conversation can continue for a very long time. 131 00:17:19,080 --> 00:17:29,460 It's been very interesting and a lot of fun just to listen to the two of you exchange insights and opinions. 132 00:17:29,460 --> 00:17:43,401 And I I hope to see more of it in the future. So thank you both very much.