ABSTRACT
Anxiety about an impending infl uenza pandemic did not originate with the emergence of the novel infl uenza A/H1N1 strain from Mexico in the spring of 2009, nor with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) declaration that this virus had achieved its pandemic potential soon thereafter. It has a much longer history. The story of pandemic infl uenza is one that appears to be as slippery as the pathogen that causes it, subject over time to forms of narrative drift and narrative shift in much the same way that the viruses are themselves subject to antigenic drifts and shifts. Exploration of infl uenza narratives reveals, however, signifi cantly more drift than shift, as there is a repetition of registers of meaning-making rather than the emergence of new narrative forms to make sense of novel viral threats. How meaning has been made from potential or realized pandemic outbreaks is a matter of import because imaginaries of contagion are deployed to justify increased intervention in bodies and serve as the ground on which demands for governance and self-governance are legitimated. Contemporary modes of governing the fl u operate by sustaining anxiety regarding anticipated outbreaks. A horizon of expectation marks the pandemic narrative, suggesting that the pandemic story will unfold in predictable ways, despite epidemiological evidence that highly pathogenic and virulent strains of infl uenza do not themselves emerge in an orderly or predictable fashion. While uncertainty dominates medical and scientifi c discourses on infl uenza, a narrative of certainty seems to be repeated in broader cultural discourses. In this narrative, pandemics are expected to follow the same course, and-most notably-to unfold according to dreaded imaginings of the worst-case scenario.
