Contagion and the National Body

Drawing on the work of George Lakoff, this book provides a detailed analysis of the organism metaphor, which draws an analogy between the national or social body and a physical body. With attention to the manner in which this metaphor conceives of various sub-groups as either beneficial or detrimental to the (social) body’s overall functioning, the author examines the use of this metaphor in the service of social injustice through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in United States, and the way in which it was employed to view marginalized sub-populations as invasive or contagious entities that need to be treated in the same way as harmful bacteria or pathogens.