ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the expression of immunological discovery narrative in popular science texts. These texts reveal the framing of immunological knowledge in forms that can be sold to non-expert audiences for their enjoyment. The analysis provides, therefore, an important stage post in the travels of immunology from the laboratory and clinic and into the economic systems of everyday life. The common metaphors of immunological explanation are employed in popular science texts, but they are modified and brought into connection with new lines of inquiry, including cancer immunotherapy and neuroimmunology. The hero scientist is a dominant trope of popular immunology, but updated and recast as a ‘hacker’ and ‘engineer’ of life’s substance and potential. This chapter therefore illuminates how immunity gains some its social potency as a life assemblage, embracing as it does science, its actors and effects, and the popular imagination.
