Entropic Selves and the Persistence of Metaphor

Hegel said the ultimate tragedy is not the struggle of an easily recognized good against a clearly loathsome evil. Tragedy, he said, is the battle between two forces, both of which are good, a battle in which only one can win. Nature has woven that struggle into the superorganism.

~Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle

Emily Martin illustrates the post-modern tendency to support an image of the human body as a complex, open system where prevailing theories of immunology play into this thermodynamic metaphor. The body becomes just another system interwoven within other, larger systems, each subtly fluctuating and effecting the other. This matrix of inter-related bio-systems appears to obscure the notion of the "enemy" thus subverting the militant metaphor prevalently used to describe the human immune system during the Cold War years. It also appears to subvert the anthropocentric model used to describe health, illness, and immunity where humans either defeat the surge of pathogenic organisms embarking on their body, or they succumb to the "enemy." The open system perspective, however, does not necessarily ensure that the human being lies at the pinnacle of importance when it comes to the value of a subsystem within the global system. In fact, human bodies, as a subsystem are shown to hold no special importance in context to other parts of the system (125). The shift in the metaphor of the human body and the immune system, health and illness, appears to by typical of the "eroding of the identifiable self" in post-modern times (Gergen 7). Diseases like HIV/AIDS and cancer appear to evade scientific attempts at classification, understanding of etiology, as well as signify an internal collapse of the immune system or suggest that the body has turned against itself. The unsettling disease metaphors associated with HIV/AIDS and cancer depict the post-modern condition and the associated symbolic waning of a static, identifiable human condition, or an a priori sense of self. The many anomalies associated with the virus such as, individuals becoming infected and then testing negative for virus and remaining healthy with no subsequent test indicating seropositivity, or the fact that some individuals may be exposed to the virus but not become infected, appear to challenge established positivist notions of health and illness (Martin 128-129).

In the article Signifying the Pandemics: Metaphors of AIDS, Cancer, and Heart Disease, Meira Weiss discusses the cultural construction of these afflictions in relation to Twentieth Century modernist and post-modernist perspectives. Weiss describes, that unlike AIDS and cancer the metaphors associated with heart disease focus on the localized nature of the affliction and its relatively accessible understandings of its causes and courses. Heart disease has a very mechanistic connotation and its victims do not usually harbor the same stigma associated with AIDS and cancer. When asked to describe a patient with heart disease, respondents, comprised of nurses, physicians and students were noted to have illustrated a relatively healthy looking individual that could be viewed as making wrong life choices, but is usually presupposed to be a victim of an unavoidable inherited disease (469). In stark contrast, Weiss notes the response she received in asking individuals to illustrate their metaphors regarding AIDS.

AIDS means loss of self. I see no face, but a skull, with a screaming mouth, like Munch's picture. It reminds me of the pictures of holocaust victims. This is even more apparent in AIDS then it is in cancer. I can see the face, but it is hidden by many arrows all pointing at it (Weiss 466).

In this vivid metaphor one can observe the duality of AIDS as a disease that not only is the breakdown of the 'mechanics' of the immune system, but also a loss of control, a loss or degradation of self that reiterates the post-modern condition. Weiss depicts how individuals may often use metaphor to lessen the impact of the loss associated with AIDS and cancer. For instance, Weiss notes that Ronald Reagan was once asked about his cancer. Reagan replied, "I didn't have cancer. I had something inside of me that had cancer in it and it was removed" (Weiss 461). In this example, Weiss shows how the body insists on localizing a disease process to a particular region that may be either physically or symbolically excised.

Martin's elaboration on HIV/AIDS and associated metaphors truly depict a "war without borders" where the xenophobic-militant metaphor regarding the immune system is no longer applicable. In regards to HIV/AIDS, the lines between "self" and "non-self" become ever so difficult to determine. The notion of the body's triumph over its invading enemies becomes deluded, as one no longer views viruses as inherently 'bad' but rather just adapted to survive under the same processes and pressures of natural selection that governs all subsystems of the global system. In the field of Biotechnology, one observes the manipulation of viruses and their innate qualities and capabilities as being an asset to human disease prevention, treatment, and even aiding in the development of new cures. Disease agents, disarmed of their associated enemy- militia connotation, as well as their pathogenic quality, are often used in potential innovative treatments of diseases like cancer and HIV/AIDS. For example, HIV carries the enzyme for reverse transcription and is able to insert this enzyme into the genome of a healthy eukaryotic cell (host cell). Scientists and geneticists have realized that this perceived harmful characteristic may be used to insert "good"genes or genes that would benefit or combat the ill effects of a particular affliction.

Trends in globalization have facilitated the spread of a flexibility model in regards to the immune system, as well as the facilitated the spread of diseases like AIDS. Martin depicts the co-evolution of disease, disease metaphor, and social metaphor as being one not of coincidence but rather as symbolizing a shift in the prevailing world-view, one that transcends borders and is dictated by the culture of capitalism and the expansion of the world market.