Bharat Jayram Venkat

What does it mean to be cured, and what does it mean for a cure to come undone? In 2011, the first cases of "incurable" tuberculosis were identified in India, inciting speculations that a limit had been reached—a limit to an antibiotic cure, and, potentially, to the antibiotic era. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research on tuberculosis treatment in India, this project enters into conversations about the potential futures of therapy in a post-antibiotic world. Rather than assuming a singular understanding of cure, this work analyzes its metamorphoses across colonial and postcolonial histories of medicine, culture, and politics in order to argue that cure itself is a mutable concept.