Affliction, Metaphor, and the Body-Politic

In Flexible Bodies, Emily Martin illustrates the contextual use of metaphor to elucidate models of immunology, the body, illness, and the larger body-politic. She demonstrates the flexibility of these metaphors as agents used to uphold the idyllic social construct of the individual as a system within a larger system. In Part Two, Martin provides a concise historical overview of the malleable metaphors of the human immune system. The immune system is depicted as a castle equipped with fortifications that block the advancing enemy or pathogen. Martin proceeds to show how the metaphor of the immune system evolves along with the concept of the body-politic. She elaborates on the militant/xenophobic narrative that has outer as well as an internal arsenal of specialized white blood cells that identify and "attack" and invading organism. A preoccupation with hygiene and "barrier maintenance" moves aside for an immunity metaphor that portrays the internal mechanisms of the human machine.
Painting by Jacques Fabian Gautier D'Agoty (1717-1785)

The human body is scrutinized during the early-mid twentieth century and checked for efficiency. During the Fordist years, Martin illustrates how the private body entered the public realm. Maintenance and surveillance of the social body became imperative to the "moving assembly line organized for mass production" (30). It appears that during the mid-twentieth century the concept of ego, as illustrated by Sigmund Freud, and put to public relations use by Edward Bernays, provided the necessary component for maintenance of the social body without employing elaborate measures by the state. This mechanism may be referred to as ego nourishment or even narcissism. Checks, balances, and rewards for maintaining the body as a well-functioning unit, include the esteem and envy of others as well as certain societal entitlements. One is encouraged to seek the esteem of others to nourish the ego, which in turn encourages bodily optimization ultimately leading to the attunement of the social and political body. I am reminded of the statement made by R. D. Laing in the Politics of Experience, "What one is supposed to want, to live for, is 'gaining pleasure from the esteem of others.' If not, one is a psychopath" (40).

Martin acknowledges a shift in immunity metaphors that suggest a transition in the social order. She refers to "flexible specialization" as a term used by political economists to describe the change in production during the 1970s. She states, "multinational capital operates in a globally integrated environment: ideally, capital flows unimpeded across all borders, all points are connected by instantaneous communication and products are made as needed for the momentary and continuously changing market" (41). In other words, trends towards globalization requires optimized flexibility. Martin discusses the shift in the metaphor of immunity as slightly departing from the traditional militant/xenophobic model to one that favors homeostatic design and specialized flexibility. Scientific discovery appears to recapitulate the flexibility metaphor used in context to the social body. Or, likewise, the socio-political metaphor may recapitulate scientific discovery. Martin illustrates the scientific discovery of the flexible antibody as portrayed as a "galvanizing moment in the development of immunology" (92). She questions whether the biological model arose as a cause or as a result of the transition in the social body dynamic - from one characterized by specialization to one of a more flexible design (93). Martin illustrates how scientific objectivity is never divorced from socio-political ideology, though it makes painstaking claims at a complete excision. The sterile lab room is still muddied by culture and politics in spite of the elaborate efforts of the scientist.

In The Body's Insistence on Meaning: Metaphor as Presentation and Representation in Illness Experience, author Laurence J. Kirmayer illustrates the importance of language in giving meaning to bodily experience:

The body and its passions are viewed as disruptions to the flow of logical thought, as momentary aberrations or troublesome forms of deviance to be rationalized, contained, and controlled. Yet, in everyday life, bodily experience preempts our rational constructions. Through the pain and suffering that foreshadow its own mortality, the body drives us to seek meaning, to take our words as seriously as our deeds (325).

Kirmayer's statement illustrates that in the liminality of illness, embodied metaphor takes precedence over and in spite of rational biomedical assertions. Martin shows how metaphor shapes the perceptions of the body as inextricably linked to the larger body-politic. Political metaphors, like biological metaphors, forge the human imagination and give the impression of limitless freedom in a terrain that is ideologically pre-determined by language.