Table Of ContentContagious Metaphor
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Contagious Metaphor
Peta Mitchell
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10010
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www.bloomsbury.com
First published 2012
© Peta Mitchell, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.
Peta Mitchell has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on
or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can
be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-3273-4
e-ISBN: 978-1-4411-9743-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mitchell, Peta.
Contagious metaphor/Peta Mitchell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-3273-4 (hardcover) – ISBN 978-1-4411-9743-6 (PDF)
– ISBN 978-1-4411-0421-2 (ePub) 1. Metaphor–Social aspects.
2. Metaphor in literature. 3. Contagion (Social psychology) I. Title.
P301.5.M48M58 2012
808.032–dc23
2012011969
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
For Alex
vi
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: Due Preparations 1
1 Contagious Metaphor 9
2 Pestilence and Poison Winds: Literary Contagions and the
Endurance of Miasma Theory 37
3 The French fin de siècle and the Birth of Social Contagion Theory 59
4 The Contagion of Example 81
5 Infectious Ideas: Richard Dawkins, Meme Theory and
the Politics of Metaphor 101
6 Networks of Contagion 123
Notes 145
Bibliography 167
Index 189
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to many individuals, groups and institutions, without whose
support this book would not have been possible. First, I must thank my
wonderful friends and colleagues in the School of English, Media Studies and Art
History at The University of Queensland. In particular, I am incredibly grateful
to Catriona Mills and Jane Stadler, who went beyond the call of duty both as
friends and as colleagues to read drafts and offer encouragement, and to Angi
Buettner, who helped me see it through to the end. I am also indebted to the
Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh
and to Graeme Turner and the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at The
University of Queensland. My visiting fellowships at the IASH and the CCCS
in 2009 provided me with vital time and space to develop this project. Just as
importantly, they gave me access to two wonderfully interdisciplinary cohorts
of scholars, with whom I could test out my ideas. Particular thanks are due to
Richard Adelman, Tom Bristow, Will Christie, John Gunders, Greg Hainge, Eric
Parisot, Mirjam Schaub and Andy Wells, all of whom contributed in important
ways to the shape this project has taken.
A version of Chapter 2 appeared as ‘Geographies/Aerographies of Contagion’
in a special ‘Aerographies’ issue of Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space (vol. 29, 2011, pp. 533–50). I gratefully acknowledge the issue editors,
Maria Fannin and Mark Jackson, for the opportunity and incentive to write the
original article, and Pion Ltd., London, for granting permission to reproduce
it here. I am also, of course, exceptionally grateful to the editorial staff at
Bloomsbury Academic: to Anna Fleming, who saw in my proposal something
worth pursuing, and to Colleen Coalter, Rachel Eisenhauer and Laura Murray,
who have all helped bring this book to fruition.
Finally, my deepest debt is to my loving and long-suffering family. Alex,
Mum, Dad, Rhylla and Bruce: sine quibus non.
Introduction: Due Preparations
Life no longer seems to be within us; it flows out, springs forth, is commu-
nicated as if by contagion, transmitted by a look, a tone of voice, a gesture,
impressing our will on others.
Honoré de Balzac, ‘Colonel Chabert’, Comédie humaine. 1832.1
Contagion today is everywhere – it is in the financial markets, on the streets
and in our computers. It characterizes our use of social networking and the way
ideas spread through society. In public and cultural discourse, catchphrases such
as ‘social contagion’, ‘emotional contagion’, ‘mental contagion’, ‘financial conta-
gion’ and even ‘cultural contagion’ have become prevalent, if not commonplace,
suggesting contagion has moved beyond our bodies and has begun infecting
our minds and our modes of interacting with and influencing others. We are
used to thinking of the word contagion as having a proper or literal meaning,
one that relates to the physical communication of disease. The Oxford English
Dictionary, for instance, gives the primary, denotative meaning of contagion as
‘the communication of disease from body to body by contact direct or mediate’
(‘Contagion’ 1989), and this is the meaning that has largely been retained in
contemporary medical-scientific discourse. When compared with this ‘literal’
sense of contagion, the sociocultural formations noted above begin to appear
more metaphorical, more figurative.
Over the past decade, these extra-medical forms of contagion have flourished
in contemporary discourse. Many have crystallized around the growth of social
networking, with its attendant viral metaphors, and the global financial crisis
of the late 2000s. In the latter of these two examples, news services reported
not only upon the financial contagion spreading throughout Europe, but also
on dangers of ‘contagious’ protests and rioting in response to recession, unem-
ployment and introduced austerity measures. Indeed, journalist Mallory Simon
(2011) went so far as to liken the financial and social contagion that character-
ized Greece’s economic crisis to the plot of Steven Soderbergh’s film Contagion
(2011), released the same year. Soderbergh’s film is about a much more ‘literal’
