Summary

“Postscript: Contempt as a Virus” is the final essay in Smith’s collection. She immediately claims that “contempt is a virus” (73) on the essay’s first page, describing its contagion, its terrible effects on power structures and human interaction, and the most fearful factor of all – it can be unwitting and unintentionally applied. For Smith, the object of contempt falls to a level below humanity, something ‘less than’ a person, and thus suffers feelings of inexplicable and unimaginable pain. She summarizes this experience by saying, “You are of no consequence” (74).

Smith goes on to discuss a recent experience she has had with contempt in her own native England. She writes that a quintessentially British form of contempt is class contempt, the hatred for those who are poor. “When you catch the British strain,” she writes, again returning to the language...