Bakterier og biopolitik: Materiel modernisme i Joseph Conrads "The Nigger of 'Narcissus'"

Around the year 1900, a number of prominent authors depict a changing world, phenomenologically and psychologically, as well as socially and politically, via bacteria. This endeavor moves their work in the direction of modernism. Drawing on Robert Esposito’s work on the interrelations between biopolitics, community and immunity, and on Jane Bennett’s notion of “vibrant matter”, this article discusses one of these works, Joseph Conrad’s 1897 novel The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, focusing on its depiction of social dynamics and the material anchorage of these dynamics.