Le Self : question d'immunité ou énigme du corps ?

Abstract

Immunology, through its accomplishement of several different research agendas, became a nexus between pathology, clinical medicine and basic biology. The concept of Self is although a fecund metaphore that integrates a complex approach of the body that excludes any possible subjective effect. Scientists started assessing the state of immunological theory to ask whether a discipline as increasingly complex as immunology can have a unifying theory, threatening this space for subjectivity. The situation of immunology offers, in this context, a historical analysis of how medicine, nosology and the complex relationships to subjectivity evolved throughout the last century. The present analysis considers the concept of Self as a major matter, important not only as a concept but also as a representation of a limit zone corresponding to the specificity of life, impossible to reduce to any physiological law.