Bull Hist Med. 2020;94(4):670-689. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2020.0089.
This article draws on Charles Rosenberg's classic essay "What Is an Epidemic?" (1989) to reflect on the complex narrative structures and temporalities of epidemics as they are experienced and storied. We begin with an analysis of Rosenberg's use of Albert Camus's The Plague and a discussion of how epidemics have been modeled in literature and in epidemiology concomitantly. Then, we argue that Charles Rosenberg's characterization of epidemics as events bounded in time that display narrative and epidemiological purity fails to account for the reinvention of life within health crises. Adopting the ecological, archaeological, and anthropological perspectives developed within African studies enriches the range of available plots, roles, and temporal sequences and ultimately transforms our way of depicting epidemics. Instead of events oriented toward their own closure, epidemics might be approached as unsettling, seemingly endless periods during which life has to be recomposed.
这篇文章借鉴了查尔斯·罗森伯格（Charles Rosenberg）的经典论文《何为流行病？》（1989 年），反思了流行病在被经历和叙述时的复杂叙事结构和时间性。我们首先分析了罗森伯格对阿尔贝·加缪（Albert Camus）的《鼠疫》（The Plague）的运用，并讨论了流行病在文学和流行病学中是如何同时建模的。然后，我们认为，查尔斯·罗森伯格将流行病描述为时间上有界限的事件，具有叙事和流行病学的纯粹性，这无法解释健康危机中生命的重新创造。采用非洲研究中发展起来的生态、考古和人类学观点，丰富了可用情节、角色和时间序列的范围，最终改变了我们描绘流行病的方式。流行病不是以自身的封闭为导向的事件，而是可以被视为令人不安的、看似无休止的时期，在此期间，生命必须重新组合。
