THE PANDEMIC IMAGINERIE : Infectious Bodies and Military-Police Theater in Australia.
L L WynnPublished in: Cultural anthropology : journal of the Society for Cultural Anthropology (2021)
When pathogens and their movement between people cannot be seen, we imagine them. That imagined menagerie- imaginerie -of infection then becomes associated with marginal others whose bodies and actions become popularly conflated with disease and its transmission. This essay explores how methods of imagining and managing the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia echoed historical scripts for policing borders and containing the bodies of outsiders deemed threats to the national body.