Epidemiological Realism (The Horla 1887)

My argument is driven by an initial set of propositions that I locate in an early fable of pandemic extinction written by Guy de Maupassant in 1887. Proposition 1: Epidemiological realism is not about how realistic representations of epidemic events are. It is about the planetarity of a world governed by epidemiological principles that apply everywhere and explain everything that falls within their purview. Proposition 2 and 3 correspond to the operational frame within which security experts anticipating on the next pandemic crisis and its impact on political institutions and social infrastructures learn from scenario-based exercises. It means that epidemiological events are not immediately available to us as objects of inquiry and concern but only through the lens of narrative and visual conventions that either substantiate or deflate the claims to crisis. Proposition 4: Epidemiological realism lends expression to forms of hyperawareness that at time can be difficult to bear. It registers and assesses disturbances in the conventions of relating random misfortunes to systemic affliction, and vice versa.