Abstract
This paper problematizes the use of biomedical metaphors to interpret the contemporary social world. Using the Cognitive Linguistic Theory and the Postcolonial Studies of Sciences, it analyzes the metaphors of the "Social Body" and the "Immunitarian Semantics" from a selected bibliography as historical products of technological and socio-political transformations of conflicting characteristics. This kind of metaphors evokes a sequence of examination/diagnosis/social-therapy that facilitates a centralized and rational management of power. Finally, the text suggests that Biomedical Sciences, Social Sciences, and the public sphere of the Global North share a common metaphoric matrix associated with the modern (capitalist/colonial/ patriarchal) rationality, folded over itself, which progressively begins to be fissured by "other metaphors" produced in Global South.
Keywords:
biomedical metaphors; epistemologies of South; social body