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Conference Paper: Serial Killer: Imagining SARS
Title | Serial Killer: Imagining SARS |
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Authors | |
Issue Date | 2013 |
Publisher | The Centre for the Humanities and Medicine, The University of Hong Kong. |
Citation | The 2013 International Conference on Viral Imaginaries: Infectious Disease and Society in Contemporary China, Hong Kong, China, 5-6 December 2013. How to Cite? |
Abstract | During the SARS outbreak and in its immediate aftermath, Western media and health agencies alike deployed a ‘serial killer’ imagery to describe the actions of the novel virus. As the World Health Organization’s ‘Global Alert and Response’ (GAR) website announced: “SARS: Chronology of a Serial Killer.” This paper explores the associations of disease with seriality, tracking the coding of the coronavirus as an anonymous and repetitive ‘killer,’ particularly in relation to debates about an ‘epidemic’ of serial killing in the PRC. The paper suggests that viral-killer analogies in the West tended to explain the virus’s emergence in the context of China’s social breakdown and in relation to a dangerous hybridization of Party ideology with the free market. The conditions which were understood to have driven SARS (mass migration, untrammeled urbanization, and social estrangement) were precisely those which had produced the serial killer. |
Persistent Identifier | http://hdl.handle.net/10722/202130 |
DC Field | Value | Language |
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dc.contributor.author | Peckham, RS | en_US |
dc.date.accessioned | 2014-08-21T08:04:56Z | - |
dc.date.available | 2014-08-21T08:04:56Z | - |
dc.date.issued | 2013 | en_US |
dc.identifier.citation | The 2013 International Conference on Viral Imaginaries: Infectious Disease and Society in Contemporary China, Hong Kong, China, 5-6 December 2013. | en_US |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10722/202130 | - |
dc.description.abstract | During the SARS outbreak and in its immediate aftermath, Western media and health agencies alike deployed a ‘serial killer’ imagery to describe the actions of the novel virus. As the World Health Organization’s ‘Global Alert and Response’ (GAR) website announced: “SARS: Chronology of a Serial Killer.” This paper explores the associations of disease with seriality, tracking the coding of the coronavirus as an anonymous and repetitive ‘killer,’ particularly in relation to debates about an ‘epidemic’ of serial killing in the PRC. The paper suggests that viral-killer analogies in the West tended to explain the virus’s emergence in the context of China’s social breakdown and in relation to a dangerous hybridization of Party ideology with the free market. The conditions which were understood to have driven SARS (mass migration, untrammeled urbanization, and social estrangement) were precisely those which had produced the serial killer. | en_US |
dc.language | eng | en_US |
dc.publisher | The Centre for the Humanities and Medicine, The University of Hong Kong. | - |
dc.relation.ispartof | International Conference on Viral Imaginaries: Infectious Disease and Society in Contemporary China | en_US |
dc.title | Serial Killer: Imagining SARS | en_US |
dc.type | Conference_Paper | en_US |
dc.identifier.email | Peckham, RS: rpeckham@hku.hk | en_US |
dc.identifier.authority | Peckham, RS=rp01193 | en_US |
dc.identifier.hkuros | 234451 | en_US |
dc.publisher.place | Hong Kong | - |