The City in a Time of Plague

The City in a Time of Plague

The plague-stricken town, traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies – this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish Predictably eyeing the Decline and Fall of the American Empire,…

On Jews and Plagues – Adventures in Jewish Historiography

On Jews and Plagues – Adventures in Jewish Historiography

“The libel that Jews were continually plotting to poison the world had particularly tragic results during the Black Death of 1348–49.Dennis Prager & Joseph Telushkin Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism[1] “There is no direct link between the massacres and the plague.”Iris Ritzmann, “The Black Death as a cause of the massacres of Jews:…

Plagues Over the Centuries Have Caused Radical Political Shifts – Examples From the Last 2500 Years

Plagues Over the Centuries Have Caused Radical Political Shifts – Examples From the Last 2500 Years

Serious epidemics can have far-reaching social, cultural, and geopolitical consequences. The plague which devastated Athens in 430 BC—in the second year of the Peloponnesian War, when an Athenian victory still seemed within reach—claimed a quarter of the population, some 75,000 people including Pericles. His successors were weak and incompetent, and Athens suffered a precipitous decline…