“And Then It Spreads”: contagion and disease as metaphors of sociomoral contamination in Charles Burns’ graphic novelBlack Hole

Abstract

This article attempts to demonstrate how Charles Burns’ graphic novelBlack Hole(1995) construes the prevalence of contagion and pathological transformation(s) as metaphors of social contamination operating within a biopolitics of segregation. Through a study of plague, infection and strange mutations in Burns’ novel, this article offers a critical evaluation of themonstrous bodyand investigates howBlack Holeportrays the social reception of a sexually contagious virus through conditions of sickness and exclusion, which become biopolitical in quality. It examines, through close reading, how Burns’ novel uses metaphors of contagion, abjection and desire, often fusing those in order to foreground the complex intercorporeal state of thesegregated subjectand in the process dramatises the urgent need to revaluate conventional strategies of isolation and otherisation through a reconsideration of the biopolitical notions around engagement, community and immunity.