“Race" and nationhood in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Die Virusepidemie in Südafrika

Abstract

In Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1989 short story, Die Virusepidemie in Südafrika (The virus epidemic in South Africa), a virus affects all white people in South Africa and turns them into black people. Both racism and anti-racism are present in the story. The text humorously dismantles “race” classifications while at the same time demonstrating the tenacity of essentialist notions of “race” as well as conceptions of the nation which are exclusionary in nature. The text condemns Apartheid South Africa for its discriminatory policies, criticises Switzerland for its complicity in Apartheid, and suggests that racist responses to people with a different skin colour are very much alive in Europe.