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,…
“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:…
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…
Since August 1, 171 people have died in Madagascar after becoming infected with a virulent strain of bubonic plague. As of November 10, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are 2,119 confirmed cases of people infected in Madagascar. While the rate of infection has declined, the WHO is expecting more cases going into…
