This essay argues that pathology as an analytical form functions as the ethical critique of mutual vulnerability. In the broad sense of assessing what is life-giving and life-taking, a sustained critical engagement with pathological forms circulating through public life positions the study of rhetoric as a kind of immunotherapy for democracy. In that sense, embracing pathology as a critical analytic accepts biopower (expansively construed) as the operative framework for politics, which would seem like a kind of surrender to life-under-assault as the landscape of power. However, if wounds and their pathologies are understood as ethically ambiguous, it is possible to envision the critical potential of pathologia not only as immunotherapeutic but also as constitutive of new configurations of being together. Contrasted with a conception of pathology that presupposes a fixed difference between vital and morbid conditions, it is suggested that pathology be more precisely considered as the ethically ambiguous project of defining vitality and life that is “more than normal.”

中文翻译：

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所有患病的东西都是批评家

本文认为，病理学是一种分析形式，是对相互脆弱性的道德批判。从广义上评估什么是赋予生命和谋取生命，对通过公共生活传播的病理形式的持续批判性介入将修辞学作为一种民主免疫疗法进行了研究。从这个意义上讲，将病理学作为一种批判性分析方法接受了生物权力（广泛地解释）作为政治的有效框架，这似乎是一种屈服于生命低谷的权力格局。但是，如果从道德上将伤口及其病状理解为模棱两可的话，则可以将病痛的关键潜力设想为不仅是免疫治疗方法，而且还可以构想新的结合方式。