Infektion als Narration. Zur Struktur und Semantik einer Erzählfigur

This article is concerned with popular infection narratives that belong to various genres or media, specifically comic, (horror) film, short story, and journalism. By drawing on the models of specifically narratological theory, the aim is, first, to develop the thesis that infections and narratives, understood as cultural phenomena, have pronounced structural and semantic similarities that make it possible to narrate about infections with particular effect and authority. Second, the article aims to show that infection narratives are grand narrative s, not only because they are narratives about narrative, and not only because the effective circulation of infection narratives follows from the general logic of narrative itself, but also because they narratively reflect the fundamental forms of difference on which cultural self-definition depends.