朝向感染的構連：生物醫學與生物哲學的交界思考

Abstract

新病原體的興起及某些被認為已銷聲匿跡的疫病的再度流行使得新興傳染病在過去數十年間廣受矚目。然而，在這一波媒體及學界眾多的討論中，再再強調感染一向以來的負面聯想，如威脅、污染等。 本文將另闢蹊徑，探討新興傳染病的相關現象如何帶出對感染的另類詮釋，甚而解構傳統對自我的定義。感染未必只能被視為有害病原體對定義自我的疆界之進犯及污染；從另一個角度來看，感染破除一般對一貫本質的執念，讓我們正視身體如何展現為身動力及其可能的流變。 在各種異質元素不斷循多重向量相互連結融合時，傳統自我與他者的二元想像也將隨之鬆動。 生物哲學，即討論生物及生醫科學所衍生的哲學或倫理議題的學門，為本文的主要理論架構。吉列斯•德勒茲及菲力克斯•瓜達希的論述尤受倚重。此外，作者爬梳相關生物醫學的論述，以期有效開發對感染的全新解讀。論文第一章回顧十九世紀至今處理傳染病的公衛政策及其生醫理論基礎。二、三章則探討如何在病毒學及免疫學的範疇中，某些相對被忽略的證據如何有助於我們將感染視為身體的構連間身動力的交流，而非自我與他者的戰爭。第四章以前兩章建立的理論架構來檢視大家記憶猶新的SARS，討論除了災難我們還能於其中看到什麼。總而言之，本文對感染的剖析與解讀得到的結論是，人體並非自我與非我爭勝的戰場。跳脫主體對於在與他者的戰爭中喪失主權的恐懼與焦慮，我們可以看到，與包括病毒在內的他者遭遇可能造成身體的流變，進而使傳統以自我為尊的主體觀念脫離二元對立的思考方式，創造新的流動與真正的差異。

One significant event which has attracted considerable attention over the past few decades is the explosion of emerging infectious diseases. The eruptions of newly discovered pathogens and the resurgence of old diseases have received extensive media coverage and induced overriding concerns among many researchers and theorists. However, this recent surge of interest largely reinscribes some ideas about contagion persistent in human imagination, most of which express adverse meanings of threat, contamination, and so on. In my dissertation, I argue contrariwise that instead of testifying to the advent of certain unprecedented catastrophe, the experience of infectious diseases in our time articulates a new way of perceiving contagion which entails a reconceptualization of identity and selfhood. Rather than describing the unpleasant invasion and pollution of a self-enclosed boundary by minuscule and harmful invaders, contagion can be understood as a lesson of becoming and affect doing away with the assumption of a consistent self. The traditional notions of self/other relationships are rendered irrelevant in continuous connection and reconnection of heterogeneous “elements” proceeding in more than one direction. The analytic framework of this dissertation follows a trajectory of thought which has been termed as “biophilosophy,” which is generally known as a subfield of philosophy of science dealing with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedicine sciences. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s visionary accounts of conditions of life have been especially referred to. To counter the old model of contagion effectively, I examine related biomedical descriptions and turning the picture thus described around so that its traditional theoretical underpinnings can be toned down and ultimately give way to different implications. The first chapter is devoted to sketching an account of historical transformations of the social or cultural responses to infectious diseases and their biomedical management mainly from the nineteenth century to the new millennium. The task carried out in the next two chapters is to demonstrate how new discoveries or perceptions of biomedical details in the fields of virology and immunology contribute to comprehending contagion as circulation of affect among assemblages instead of as certain self-other confrontation. In Chapter Four I will apply my analysis of contagion informed by Deleuzian philosophy to examine the latest epidemic of the SARS as a case study to see what difference a new model of contagion can make in modifying the way we take what would have bee considered as an outright disaster. To sum up, having reflected on contagion as such, it is made explicit that the human body is not a battlefield where the self and nonself fight for sovereignty. Thinking beyond the level of certain subjective anxiety about losing its autonomy or supremacy to certain contaminating force of other, encounters with “others,” ranging and extending from pathogenic ones to those lower terms of any binary oppositions, actually might result in certain novel becomings, which means possible new bodies in the field of biomedicine and in cultural politics means the invention of new trajectories which release the subject in its traditional sense from the grid of rigid categories so that real creations and real differences can take place.