Disposability is in the Blood: Biopolitical Cultures of Health in Chinese, Romanian and Brazilian Literature and Documentary Films
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Lupascu, Victoria
- Graduate Program:
- Comparative Literature
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 21, 2019
- Committee Members:
- Charlotte Diane Eubanks, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Shuang Shen, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Rosemary Jane Jolly, Committee Member
Magali Armillas-Tiseyra, Committee Member
Krista Marie Brune, Outside Member
Charlotte Diane Eubanks, Program Head/Chair
Charlotte Diane Eubanks, Committee Chair/Co-Chair - Keywords:
- comparative literature
medical humanities
Chinese literature
Disposability
hiv/aids
romanian documentary films
Brazilian literature - Abstract:
- Conversations about epidemics, diseases and global health have progressively entered public spheres around the world in recent decades, especially with the intensification of economic disparities within developing countries, the refugee crisis and globalization. Questions such as who should receive immediate and free care, what diseases impact the economic, socio-political and cultural milieu more powerfully and who is disposable in times of crisis open up new fields of inquiry about the ethical value of human life. Such questions are particularly charged when diseases create disposable bodies whose access to health care depends on their productivity in global capitalist networks. The dissertation compares the literary and cinematic exchanges between China, Romanian and Brazil in terms of health dynamics. The project brings critical medical humanities and biopolitical theories to bear on literary and cinematic studies in order to understand the ways in which new viruses such as HIV are imagined and culturally understood; it pays close attention to the medicalization of everyday life, the spread of epidemics and their consequences on the poor strata of society. I claim that the lack of connections between critical medical humanities and literature and film speaks of the gap in these fields’ ethical make-up. Intergenerational harm as a result of epidemics and disease, as it appears in a comparative global framework, is often disguised by analysis of national modernization and security. In contrast to this angle, I propose an in-depth analysis of the ways in which culture imagines and translates into practice the ethical and material value of human life in a highly interconnected global network.