| In this dissertation, I propose an immuno-environmental model of biomedical phenomena in which human and nonhuman entities participate actively in vital material-semiotic assemblages with discursive and material capacity in which indeterminacy and uncertainty are always at work. In order to demonstrate my argument, I examine a variety of documents as sociocultural archives of expert and non-expert immunological knowledge practices, including scientific articles and medical studies, fictional and non-fictional accounts, social media, blogs and news reports. My project is therefore invested both in the ontological and in the epistemological foundations of immunological knowledge, which I contend collapse the boundaries between the self-contained, autonomous (human) subject and its physical and social surroundings. I use case studies of two chronic health conditions to examine in detail how immunological assemblages are enacted and materialized: celiac disease, an autoimmune gastrointestinal disorder, and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, an idiopathic environmental syndrome. |
