Medicine+K+(Medicalizing+Africa+Bad)

1NC

A. The Perception of Africa as disease and death lead to the return of colonialism and imperialism in the name of healing missions Giuliana Lund, assistant professor of postcolonial studies in the. Interdisciplinary Humanities Program at Arizona State University. 2003, “"Healing the Nation" Medicolonial Discourse and the State of Emergency from Apartheid to Truth and Reconciliation” pg 90-91 Africa has long been associated in the imperialist imagination with disease and death. In the nineteenth century, the continent was commonly referred to as the "white man's grave." The civilizing mission was thus conceived, from the first, as a healing mission. Among the European explorers who laid the groundwork for imperialist expansion were numerous doctors, the most prominent of whom was Livingstone. As healers, missionaries in Africa viewed themselves as the harbingers not only of spiritual enlightenment, but also of material progress. Medicine was thought to serve both goals because in addition to saving lives and alleviating suffering it would attract followers to the missions and contribute to the prestige of Western [End Page 90] culture at the expense of local culture. James Stewart, a typical disciple of Livingstone, used this "union of medical and spiritual work" to combat indigenous healing practice, "one of the mightiest and most malignant of influences in Africa." 1 Eventually, medicine became a means of controlling African bodies and minds and thus an instrument of imperialism (Comaroff 1993).

B. Any Medical support in Africa has been for the health of the imperialists and the control of black bodies to allow for the further pursuit of economic interests Giuliana Lund, assistant professor of postcolonial studies in the. Interdisciplinary Humanities Program at Arizona State University. 2003, “"Healing the Nation" Medicolonial Discourse and the State of Emergency from Apartheid to Truth and Reconciliation” pg 91-92 Despite the rhetoric of the healing mission, the primary concern of tropical medicine in its early stages was the health of European soldiers, civil servants, and settlers. Whereas medical advances such as quinine prophylaxis facilitated colonial expansion, they did not initially contribute to improved health among the indigenous population. However, enclavism—the exclusive preoccupation with the health of European expatriates—ultimately proved impracticable in the Cape Colony, where the white minority could not be isolated without sacrificing its economic interests or capacity to govern. Medical officers therefore shifted their strategy from enclavism to a more inclusive public health approach that concerned itself with Africans as well as colonists. Even so, the indigenous population was usually treated only for diseases of particular concern to white settlers because of their highly contagious nature or their symbolic significance: bubonic plague and leprosy thus drew greater attention than diseases prevalent in shanty towns or rural environments, even though the latter caused higher mortality and morbidity among Africans. 2 By the turn of the nineteenth century, medicine had taken on a more interventionist public face in the colonies. "[T]he 'military' model of public health was triumphant: 'invasive organisms' were attacked by 'campaigns,' by single solutions like 'magic bullets,' by 'corps' of medical experts and often with the priorities of military health in the minds of colonial and would-be colonial powers." 3 Public health policies extended the power of the colonial state over the indigenous population, intervening in everything from housing to [End Page 92] personal habits. This assertion of control over black bodies in the name of hygiene served colonial interests by protecting the material welfare of settler society: its health, home, trade, and workforce. Though hygiene campaigns ostensibly assuaged white paranoia about black alterity, they surreptitiously encouraged racial suspicion in order to legitimize continued state authority. Both conservatives who feared Africans as the supposed source of contagion and liberals who wished to protect Africans from the "ills" of modern life conspired to segregate them from white enclaves. Thus, as Maynard Swanson has shown, "the sanitation syndrome was everyone's point of reconciliation": "medical officials and other public authorities in South Africa at the turn of the century were imbued with the imagery of infectious disease as a societal metaphor, and ... this metaphor powerfully interacted with British and South African racial attitudes to influence the policies and shape the institutions of segregation ... a major strand in the creation of urban apartheid" (1977, 387).

C. This Bio-political control of “Black bodies” by the imperialist results in genocide Benjamin Valentino, PHD, FINAL SOLUTIONS: MASS KILLING AND GENOCIDE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, 2004, p. 89 The purpose of an empire is to extract wealth from conquests, but empires would be prohibitively expensive to maintain if each city, state, or province had to be defeated by force and then policed to a man. Imperial leaders, therefore, have strong incentives to adopt a strategy of mass killing as a means of deterring rebellions and resistance within their empire as a method of intimidating future conquests into submission. The largescale killing of rebellious subjects is intended to demonstrate to all others considering resistance the terrible fate awaiting those who refuse to accept imperial rule.

D. The discourse of disease and plague is a slippery slope of imperial expansion Giuliana Lund, assistant professor of postcolonial studies in the. Interdisciplinary Humanities Program at Arizona State University. 2003, “"Healing the Nation" The metaphor of plague is a highly contagious one with a seemingly endless capacity for imperialist expansion. Plague as a metaphor thus has similarly totalizing tendencies as actual outbreaks of plague. Indeed, slippage within the concept of plague is evident in its application even within a single work. In The Wall of the Plague, the comparative, universalist approach is countered by the tendency to see plague in both literal and metaphoric senses as something endemic to the South African landscape and social structure. Furthermore, this environmental determinism coexists uneasily with a rhetoric of blame, due to the strong association of African peoples with the land. This problem becomes evident when one of the protagonists describes a township as "an infestation of rats"; while the comment may have been intended to strengthen the general thematics of apartheid as plague, it can also be interpreted as suggesting that Africans are disease carriers. Indeed, the two ideas may be inseparable, for in the epidemiological model built into germ theory, victims of disease are also vectors of disease. Proclaiming apartheid a plague indicates that South Africans are infected, and this feeds fears of contagion.

Overall, plague rhetoric bolsters the argument that individuals are not morally or legally responsible for their actions, for though the plague analogy may indicate the absolute evil of apartheid and the horrendous damage it has done to South Africans, it also erases significant historical differentials, equalizes suffering indiscriminately, and suggests that individuals were incapacitated by apartheid in such a manner that no blame can be ascribed to them. The language of plague thus becomes part of the strategic lexicon of those attempting to escape public condemnation. Paul Erasmus, a former government operative who requested amnesty from the TRC, participated in many terrorist activities in the name of apartheid, including burning down the only medical clinic in the township of Alexandra. [End Page 101] Although he apparently repents his past activities, he simultaneously shifts the responsibility for his crimes, fashioning himself as the true victim of apartheid. "I'm ashamed of what I was involved in," he comments, "my God, it was a sick system, on everybody. Nobody in this country that wasn't a victim. We're all victimized. Afrikaners are victimized, possibly more than any other grouping" (Goodman 1999, 129). The invocation of sickness in Erasmus's statement substitutes abstract, uncontrollable forces for individual agency and accountability; it is an embellishment of the legal insanity defense.

E. reject the hegemonic residue left behind by imperialist thinking of the 19th and 20th century on Africa as diseased, in order to prevent the rise of a second imperial domination Jeff D. Bass, November 1998, “Heart of Darkness and Hot zones: The ieolofeme of imperial contagion in recent accounts of viral outbreaks” 445-6

CARD IS PDF SO I DONT KNOW HOW TO PUT IT ONLINE! BLITZ ME (SARAH HEATON) IF YOU WANT IT TO BE EMAILED TO YOU.