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It is one of the crucial contributions to the history of science in the last half century. It takes as its starting point the sudden appearance of biology as a science in the nineteenth century and examines the conditions determining its particular makeup. Canguilhem analyzes the radically new way in which health and disease were defined in the early nineteenth century, showing that the emerging categories of the normal and the pathological were far from objective scientific concepts. He demonstrates how the epistemological foundations of modern biology and medicine were intertwined with political, economic, and technological imperatives.

疾病往往不是纯粹的生物性事实与私密的健康问题，而总是与更广泛的政治现实相联系，与群体的境况甚至族群的安危相接榫。文学传统之中，疾病的意象常被用以喻指贫弱而待疗治的民族。当代爱尔兰诗人保罗·马尔登以反隐喻、反浪漫的书写策略对这一传统进行了逆向的反拨，将疾病圈定在身体之上，以临床式的细致入微的描述让我们去直视肌体的损伤和腐败，剥去包裹其上的层层象征意义。诗人以此指向身体的隐喻消解之后意义的匮乏，从而在“诗”与“尸”之间划上了等号，并由此表现生命的脆弱不堪与诗的限度。