Early Modern expansionism and its aftermaths constitute a biopolitical laboratory, measuring social and individual well-being and decay, and defining healthy bodies and adequate remedies through policies controlling disease. This anthology traces the power over life and death from 16th century Chronicles of the Indies to Covid-19 narratives, asking how pathology and healing have been marked by the long shadows of colonialism, and how bodies, remedies, and policies intersect in contexts shaped by (post)imperial structures.
The contributors analyze anatomies and configurations of the flesh, the space bodies inhabit in the mapping of immune systems, and the corporeal performances and discourses creating an infectious or robust biosphere. The authors revisit the preventive or reactive substances proposed or imagined for malady and recovery, and the way mixtures are applied. How can body practices and treatments be strategies to create or disturb impermeability and safety? How do institutional decisions, governmental laws, aesthetic interventions, or moral instructions regulate human thriving and suffering? Such questions, rooted in Romance Literatures, Colonial Studies, Medical History, and Biopolitics, are addressed in this book.