Contaminating National Identity Through Intercultural Intimacy: (Im)purity and the Pandemic

Abstract

This paper brings together the threads of contagion, intimacy, and national identity in an exploration of border crossings. Framed through the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of vaccine nationalism, we interrogate the discourse of contagion and impurity and trace the ways it has been used by self-interested elites to advance ethnonational, exclusivist agendas. Using the authors’ relationship as a jumping off point for critical and cultural analysis, we use intimacy, affect, and illness as hinges between bodies, identities, and geographies. We argue that non-traditional, queer, cross-cultural relationships and encounters are sites through which to interrogate the violence of borders and to subvert the exclusion and hierarchy inherent to nationalism as a political project. We offer an experimental model for performing political and cultural research across disciplinary boundaries, advancing knowledge dissemination between and across fields.