The 1920 Paris plague. Dangerous classes, anti-semitism, and the rhetoric of infamy

The plague last appeared in Paris in 1920, as an epidemic outbreak concentrated in certain poor districts in the north of the city. In order to maintain secrecy, doctors referred to it as “Disease No. 9”. The strangeness of this name only served to arouse suspicion, brought to the French Senate by a group of parliamentarians from the anti-republican right. This article consists of a critical analysis of their discourse. It proposes the concept of “rhetorics of infamy” to account for the ways in which the infectious meanings of disease are extended to minorities triply disqualified by discrimination through class, race, and religion.s