Postmodernism and Immune Selfhood

Abstract

Two research traditions in immunology, supposedly centered on the same issue of immune identification, have followed different theoretical goals and originated from competing philosophical foundations. These may be labelled modernist and postmodernist, respectively, thereby applying cultural and philosophical categories to immunology in order to articulate potential scientific resonances with the broader culture. To accept that exercise an important caveat is imposed, namely, this translation is most appropriately discussed at the level of metaphor. In other words, I will structure my treatment of these issues as expressed in the metaphorical language of the discipline, and thus the bulk of this discussion will focus on how the language and modeling of the science draws from the culture-at-large. Scientists seek images from their everyday lives to describe phenomena that may be poorly articulated in their technical discourse; such is the utility and importance of metaphors generally, and thus it is not surprising that we might discern echoes of a postmodernist sentiment in the metaphors borrowed from post-World War II culture. I will also discuss, to a more limited extent, how postmodernists have sought support for their own ideological arguments in immunology. This last topic serves only to illustrate the bidirectionality of scientific discourse with the society in which it is embedded.

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