Part of the Cambridge Elements series on Histories of Emotions and the Senses, Philippa Nicole Barr’s Uncertainty and Emotion in the 1900 Sydney Plague takes a deep dive into the role of disgust in the response to the first plague outbreak in Sydney, Australia in 1900, during the Third Pandemic (1894–c.1950).
The Elements series is intended to fill the publishing gap between journal articles and full-length books by offering concise and comprehensive works on key topics. As such, this is a very densely packed book, at only 62 pages (excluding references). Drawing upon a range of textual and visible sources (public health reports, photographs, parliamentary records, and newspapers), Barr makes a series of arguments which speak to debates in several different areas, including affect theory and the historiography of smell. In this review, I will focus on what I see as the central thread which runs throughout the book: the mobilisation of (the symbolism of) dirt and (the emotion of) disgust by medical and governmental authorities in the public health response to legitimate their actions (e.g. quarantine, fumigation, even demolition), and by extension legitimise their exercise of power.
What makes this outbreak compelling as a case study is its occurrence at a significant historical moment: the eve of Australia’s Federation. At the time of the arrival of the plague, New South Wales was in a liminal state between colony and state of an independent country, where people were in the process of developing a new (and mainly ‘white’) identity. Barr argues that the public health thinking at this time was formative for the new nation.
The book is organised into seven chapters. The Introduction outlines the key ideas and theory relating to dirt as a symbol, drawing from 1960s–1970s symbolic anthropology (e.g. Mary Douglas, Victor Turner), the concept of ‘disgust objects’, and disgust as a learned response. Barr’s focus on disgust also incorporates concepts central to anthropology more broadly (especially biological anthropology), such as variability and plasticity. Furthermore, this chapter introduces her response (picked up again in the final chapter) to Ruth Leys’s critique of affect theory as implying that affect is not intentional.Footnote 1
Chapter 2 tells the story of the outbreak and the response, from quarantine to aggressive cleaning and demolition of homes, while Chapter 3 considers anti-Chinese racism in the response and the use of odour as a marker of racial difference. Other emotions (shame, fear) make an appearance, as well as stigma. Barr makes the argument that the 1900 plague outbreak prompted the most extreme institutional response of any nineteenth-century epidemic because of the ‘proliferation’ of symbolism and emotion, rather than because of a real extreme threat.
Chapter 4 covers issues of sanitation in the expanding urban environment. It focuses on Dr John Ashburton-Thompson, the Chief Medical Officer of the New South Wales (NSW) Board of Health, and the different institutional responses to the outbreak, from rat extermination to isolation and quarantine. Barr contrasts the outbreak responses in British India, where coercive policies focused on Indian colonial subjects were met with resistance, to Sydney, where the white settler population was largely supportive of the anti-plague public health measures. Next, Chapter 5 (the shortest of the book, at four pages) focuses on changing understandings of disease causation and the confusion and uncertainty (particularly on Ashburton-Thompson’s part) about how the plague was transmitted.
Chapter 6 examines smell and odour, specifically air as a disgust object, the chemical smells of modernity, and fumigation as symbolic purification. Barr contributes to the debate over whether nineteenth- and twentieth-century sanitary reforms reduced, or even eliminated, odour in the urban landscape or only changed the nature of the odour. She argues that during this outbreak in Sydney, people wanted new odours – specifically chemical smells (sulphur, carbolic acid, etc.) of disinfection – rather than just the removal of odours.
The final chapter then returns to her argument that affect can include intention, contending that the lessons and evaluations that inform the disgust reaction are temporally separate from the instantaneous affective response. She makes the point that seeing judgment as part of the disgust response means there is room for agency. In the very last section (‘7.3 – Intentional Disgust’), she notes that examination of the plasticity of disgust can inform debates in the history of emotions, such as about affect and agency and argues for moving beyond binaries of intentional/unintentional.
Barr ends the book with some ideas for future research, the last of which is how emotions and affects are deliberately solicited in public health communication. Her point that ‘emotions and affects can be strategically evoked and deployed to justify interventions and compel behaviour change’ (p. 55) is highly relevant to public health today and immediately brought to my mind the work of anthropologist Julie Spray on the use of fear in New Zealand’s anti-rheumatic fever campaign in the 2010s.Footnote 2 The posters and TV ads deliberately used fear and guilt to provoke action from the target audience (Māori and Pacific parents) but unintentionally led to fear and anxiety in children and other forms of emotional collateral damage.Footnote 3 Barr’s historical work can thus contribute to wider inter- and trans-disciplinary conversations about the design and implementation of public health responses.
This case study could not be more suited to a series focused on histories of emotions and the senses. Not only does smell play a central role, as well as multiple emotions (fear, shame), but disgust – the primary focus – acts as a bridge between the senses and emotions. It contributes to our understanding of the role of emotion and the senses in infectious disease history, and Barr’s arguments and points about the use of emotion in public health responses are intensely relevant today. This Element piece will appeal, therefore, not only to scholars interested in health history but also to those seeking to draw lessons from a broader range of disciplines to inform current approaches to public health.
