ABSTRACT
This chapter focusses on the narratives and metaphors used to explain immunological discoveries and immune systems, with reference to interviews with scientists and researchers. The chapter is an important preliminary step in the argument of the book about immunity assemblages and how they produce knowledge, understanding and action. Immunity, like ‘cell’ and other biological language, is a metaphor that has been used to name and mobilise biological discovery. But as this chapter shows, the meanings of immunity have gathered complexities and new applications in line with the transformation of scientific knowledge and technological changes. Drawing on Haraway, the chapter reflects on the significance of discovery narrative and particularly the gendering of its bodies and heroes and ramifications for the shape of immunological knowledge. Key metaphors – violence, self-defence, education, information technology, engineering – are identified and discussed for their effects in science narrative. The chapter also considers how immunological rationalities have been taken into assumptions and practices of healing the body, by drawing on Ed Cohen’s critical medical history of immunity.
