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Catching Colds with Canguilhem

Culturing Relations with Common Cold Viruses

Bibliographic Data

ID13100732
AuthorsBeth Greenhough (0000-0002-7351-2619, University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume9
Issue2
Pages480-499
Publication date2022-07-14
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeoHumanities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2373-5678 • E-ISSN: 2373-566X
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/2373566x.2022.2072230
OpenAlexW4285386957
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited44

This paper draws on the thought of the historian of science, Georges Canguilhem, to explore how the practice of making medical knowledge brings into question accepted understandings of (ill)health and contagious disease. Drawing out how the lively materialities of both humans and viruses shape human experience of viral infection, the analysis focuses on written and oral histories of the UK’s Common Cold research Unit (CCU), associated scientific papers and correspondence between 1961 and 1965, and press cuttings and visitors’ books from the CCU archives, in order to offer multiple readings of the relationship between humans and cold viruses at this site. These alternative post-natural histories challenge our preconceptions about the costs and benefits of living-with-viruses and the role of infection and associated symptoms in drawing lines between the normal and the pathological. The archives of the CCU offer new ways of encountering viruses and their histories, and evidence that that infection can be, as Canguilhem suggests, a “positive, innovative experience,” while at the same time questioning the novelty of recent posthumanist accounts of human-virus relations

Common cold · Epistemology · Novelty · Order (exchange · Relation (database · Sociology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History of Science and Medicine · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Immunology

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Unique citing works3
Citations per year3
Citation span2025 - 2026 (2)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 3
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