"Influenzaphobia": fear and death in the context of the Spanish flu in Sergipe

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the relationship between the health crisis resulting from the Spanish flu epidemic in Sergipe and the individual and/or collective manifestation of the feeling of fear in local society. The time frame for the analysis corresponds to the four-month period that runs from September to December 1918, an interval that covers both the phase that preceded the spread of influenza in the state and the epidemic outbreak in Sergipe. Periodicals published at the time in the capital Aracaju constitute the apparatus of sources used in the research, which is based on theoretical-methodological discussions regarding fear and death in historiography, as well as on approaches related to the evolution of this epidemic in Brazil, in general, and in Sergipe, in particular. The hypothesis is raised that, through the press, the Spanish flu became capable of frightening the population of Sergipe, due to the content of journalistic texts and the presence of an inherent subjectivity in the editors' discourse.