What Will We Do With Our Fear?
Eula Biss, On Immunity: An Inoculation
Fitzcarraldo Editions, 216pp, £12.99, ISBN 9780992974749
reviewed by Peter Marshall
Early in 2015, following years of growing unease about the safety and necessity of vaccination, an outbreak of measles that began in Disney World resulted in over 100 cases of the once eradicated disease being reported throughout the United States. The parents who chose not to vaccinate their children, and so precipitated the outbreak, were not religious nor were they necessarily right-wing science deniers. Many were affluent, educated, white, and from the upper middle-class. That is, they came from the same segment of society that Eula Biss, author of the timely book, On Immunity: An Inoculation, belongs to. Like many who chose not to immunise, Biss worried that increase in scheduled vaccinations for her child was motivated by an unholy, profit-based alliance between government and big pharmaceuticals, rather than public health. The book not only records her personal journey into the science and the sociology of immunisation, but seeks to uncover something about what it means for us to be social beings.
Like many mothers in 2008, Biss found herself agonising over the question of whether to vaccinate her newborn son against the H1N1 flu strain. Officials warned that this could be as deadly as the 1919 Spanish Flu outbreak that killed more people than the First World War. Yet many thought these warnings were an overreaction, and the supposed dangers a selling point. Was there a need for immunisation or a need for greater profit? Would immunising her child be more dangerous than not?
Such questions pressed Biss into a mountain of research that led beyond data, into the deeper cultural ramifications of vaccination and into questions that take the form of self-examination of why people like Biss – white, economically comfortable and educated – are opposed to immunisations. Couched in this resistance are long standing racial and social attitudes that view disease and sickness as a product of the morally and socially unclean. Much more than a matter of health and well being, the fear of vaccines has often been a story of privilege, one that has reflected the economic and racial prejudices of the time.
Though the book is timely, and ultimately moves towards a conclusion that immunisation is a matter of social responsibility, readers should relinquish any expectation they might have of finding a clear-cut, traditionally argued contribution to the debate. For all the history, sociology and expert testimony, that is, the standard ingredients of a nonfiction work that weighs in on a contemporary debate, On Immunity is a wandering creative exercise. On these pages Biss reflects on competing ideas, explore facets of information, and what results is a book-length essay in the true, Renaissance sense of the term, essai: an attempt.
As in her shorter essays, Biss’s technique in On Immunity is to take apparently unrelated subjects, place them side by side and allow these unlike elements to form an argument that may not be immediately clear. Where as many readers may expect a synthesis, Biss leaves the incongruity hanging, putting the reader to work to figure out, even imagine, the underlining argument. For example, in the early part of the book, one section opens with her recounting her difficulties reading Kierkegaard in college, then goes into blood and organ donation, this leads to herd immunity, the biology of bees, and how cooperation led to solving the SARS scare in 2003. Though this is a famished summary, the unity that binds together these topics goes unannounced. The reader must pause, reflect and work on such passages as though they were a puzzle, which ultimately, produces an active and often exhilarating reading experience.
Why this technique? There is certainly a strong aesthetic component to this answer, one that has to do with stylisation and form, but more than art for art’s sake, jumbling together fragments of ideas and demonstrating a resistance to a clear direction of argument is indicative of Biss’s personal experience, her anxieties as a mother set against the overwhelming amount of information and opinions available to her. She writes:
The book is shot through with the spirit of Montaigne’s famous skeptical proclamation, Que sais-je? – What do I know? For Biss is not merely engaged in an intellectual exercise but is portraying her maternal anxiety and need for certainty with regards to her child’s health.
One of the distractions of the book is the one-sided depiction of motherhood as being dominated fear. Biss, or I should say, Biss as she is portrayed, is a helicopter mother par excellence. At times, such as when she cries to her husband that if the government, ‘can’t keep phthalates out of my baby’s bedroom and parabens out of his lotion ... for the love of God, then what is it good for?’ she sounds like a character from a Woody Allen movie.
The irony of the work is that the insulating and hyper-protective nature of Biss’s mothering is at odds with the underlining theme of the book. Despite the often elusive nature of her argument, the book does tend towards a central idea, one that can be simply described as our mutual interdependence, that ‘we are an extended family.’ Meditating on the social garden, Biss writes, ‘we are each other’s environment. Immunity is a shared space – a garden we tend together.’ Behind this poetic call for mutual care and responsibility, is a deeper philosophic argument that is woven through the entire book. Phrases such as ‘we look inward and find not self, but other,’ along with the prevailing sentiment that our bodies do not belong to us alone, but to a wider social and biological world. These notions can seem to stand at odds with the extremely protective and controlling mother that Biss portrays herself to be. If immunity is a shared garden, then Biss is the one screaming at the hired workers, grumbling about the neighbours and shooing off those who come to close to her plot of soil.
However, this need not be read as a shortcoming. In many ways, On Immunity is a journey –perhaps a struggle –to overcome this tendency to isolate one’s family from the uncertainties and contagions of the world and others.
Biss’s own fears that feed her impulse to isolate her child from the dangers of the world can, at times, makes the professed ideals of interdependence into one of those touching sentiments that are easy to champion but few want to live. But this disjunction is an extension of her style to place disparate and often times competing elements side by side. Perhaps more importantly, it is honest. Every thoughtful person realises, at some time, that the gulf between their ideals and how they live is rather sizeable. Among its many qualities, this book is a personal statement about finding a corrective to one’s own fears, learning to live in a wider community that is beyond certainty and beyond control, but is a very real part of who we are.
Like many mothers in 2008, Biss found herself agonising over the question of whether to vaccinate her newborn son against the H1N1 flu strain. Officials warned that this could be as deadly as the 1919 Spanish Flu outbreak that killed more people than the First World War. Yet many thought these warnings were an overreaction, and the supposed dangers a selling point. Was there a need for immunisation or a need for greater profit? Would immunising her child be more dangerous than not?
Such questions pressed Biss into a mountain of research that led beyond data, into the deeper cultural ramifications of vaccination and into questions that take the form of self-examination of why people like Biss – white, economically comfortable and educated – are opposed to immunisations. Couched in this resistance are long standing racial and social attitudes that view disease and sickness as a product of the morally and socially unclean. Much more than a matter of health and well being, the fear of vaccines has often been a story of privilege, one that has reflected the economic and racial prejudices of the time.
Though the book is timely, and ultimately moves towards a conclusion that immunisation is a matter of social responsibility, readers should relinquish any expectation they might have of finding a clear-cut, traditionally argued contribution to the debate. For all the history, sociology and expert testimony, that is, the standard ingredients of a nonfiction work that weighs in on a contemporary debate, On Immunity is a wandering creative exercise. On these pages Biss reflects on competing ideas, explore facets of information, and what results is a book-length essay in the true, Renaissance sense of the term, essai: an attempt.
As in her shorter essays, Biss’s technique in On Immunity is to take apparently unrelated subjects, place them side by side and allow these unlike elements to form an argument that may not be immediately clear. Where as many readers may expect a synthesis, Biss leaves the incongruity hanging, putting the reader to work to figure out, even imagine, the underlining argument. For example, in the early part of the book, one section opens with her recounting her difficulties reading Kierkegaard in college, then goes into blood and organ donation, this leads to herd immunity, the biology of bees, and how cooperation led to solving the SARS scare in 2003. Though this is a famished summary, the unity that binds together these topics goes unannounced. The reader must pause, reflect and work on such passages as though they were a puzzle, which ultimately, produces an active and often exhilarating reading experience.
Why this technique? There is certainly a strong aesthetic component to this answer, one that has to do with stylisation and form, but more than art for art’s sake, jumbling together fragments of ideas and demonstrating a resistance to a clear direction of argument is indicative of Biss’s personal experience, her anxieties as a mother set against the overwhelming amount of information and opinions available to her. She writes:
Being lost in Wonderland is what is feels like to learn about an unfamiliar subject, and research is inevitably a rabbit hole. I fell down it, in my investigation of immunization, and fell and fell, finding that it was much deeper than I anticipated. Like Alice, I fell past shelves full of books, more than I could ever read. Like Alice, I arrived at locked doors. “Drink me,” I was commanded by one source. “Eat me,” I was told by another. They had opposite effects –I grew and I shrank, I believed and did not believe. I cried then found myself swimming in my own tears.
The book is shot through with the spirit of Montaigne’s famous skeptical proclamation, Que sais-je? – What do I know? For Biss is not merely engaged in an intellectual exercise but is portraying her maternal anxiety and need for certainty with regards to her child’s health.
One of the distractions of the book is the one-sided depiction of motherhood as being dominated fear. Biss, or I should say, Biss as she is portrayed, is a helicopter mother par excellence. At times, such as when she cries to her husband that if the government, ‘can’t keep phthalates out of my baby’s bedroom and parabens out of his lotion ... for the love of God, then what is it good for?’ she sounds like a character from a Woody Allen movie.
The irony of the work is that the insulating and hyper-protective nature of Biss’s mothering is at odds with the underlining theme of the book. Despite the often elusive nature of her argument, the book does tend towards a central idea, one that can be simply described as our mutual interdependence, that ‘we are an extended family.’ Meditating on the social garden, Biss writes, ‘we are each other’s environment. Immunity is a shared space – a garden we tend together.’ Behind this poetic call for mutual care and responsibility, is a deeper philosophic argument that is woven through the entire book. Phrases such as ‘we look inward and find not self, but other,’ along with the prevailing sentiment that our bodies do not belong to us alone, but to a wider social and biological world. These notions can seem to stand at odds with the extremely protective and controlling mother that Biss portrays herself to be. If immunity is a shared garden, then Biss is the one screaming at the hired workers, grumbling about the neighbours and shooing off those who come to close to her plot of soil.
However, this need not be read as a shortcoming. In many ways, On Immunity is a journey –perhaps a struggle –to overcome this tendency to isolate one’s family from the uncertainties and contagions of the world and others.
What has been done to us seems to be, among other things, that we have been made fearful. What will we do with our fear? This strikes me as a central question of both citizenship and motherhood. As mothers, we must somehow square our power with our powerlessness.
Biss’s own fears that feed her impulse to isolate her child from the dangers of the world can, at times, makes the professed ideals of interdependence into one of those touching sentiments that are easy to champion but few want to live. But this disjunction is an extension of her style to place disparate and often times competing elements side by side. Perhaps more importantly, it is honest. Every thoughtful person realises, at some time, that the gulf between their ideals and how they live is rather sizeable. Among its many qualities, this book is a personal statement about finding a corrective to one’s own fears, learning to live in a wider community that is beyond certainty and beyond control, but is a very real part of who we are.