Discourses of disease and contamination remain central to Canadian nation-building against colonized bodies.

Evidence

Relying on the conceptual tools of Sander Gilman and others, Carmela Murdocca has shown that the notion of a degenerate, disease-ridden body of colour against a healthy bourgeois citizenry has long structured the ideological production of the Canadian nation: ‘The use of the discourse of contamination and disease is used to reaffirm colonial ideas about the inferiority and bodily degeneracy of colonized peoples.’ The presence of disease, Murdocca points out, requires regulation wherein ‘the diseased is represented both as a moral danger and as a bodily danger to otherwise law-abiding, legitimate citizens.’ — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 101

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the disease/contamination framing used in anxiety-about-immigration scholarship and health-security work.
• QUESTION: Worth tracing how the disease metaphor showed up in specific Canadian immigration and security cases.