Thinking like a Virus: Contagion, Postmodernist Epistemology, and the Ethics of Belief

This chapter explores how postmodernism and its rejection of grand narratives inform current epistemological theory, emerging from the study of contagion as a fluid and transgressive phenomenon. Donner proposes a drastic re-centering of epistemology around the notion of belief as well as the abandonment of truth and knowledge as possible objects of enquiry. By embracing the idea that the foundations of every belief cannot but themselves be the unjustified and unjustifiable products of an epistemic act, the result of an arbitrary cultural or individual decision, this chapter suggests a new approach to epistemology. Re-framing belief as akin to an insidious form of viral programming, lurking endemically in every belief and act, this new theory signals the invariably performative dimension of every belief and, ultimately, the necessary ethical responsibility revealed by applying epidemiological thinking to epistemological problems.