可以预料，在美国，那些致力于从艾滋病这种流行病中找出道德教训的公共喉舌们，（……）无非是这样一些人，其心之所系，是担忧美国能否不坠其意志，继续维持其好战性、军备开支以及坚定的反共立场，他们到处寻找美国政治权威和帝国权威衰落的迹象。对“同性恋瘟疫”的谴责，是对当代各种形式的宽容忍让 (permissiveness of all kinds) 的更大抱怨的一个部分，这种抱怨常见于西方反自由主义分子 (antiliberals) 以及来自苏联阵营的众多流亡者 (many exiles from the Russian bloc) 中；此乃对“软弱”西方的现已变得司空见惯的指责，说 (p.135) 它沉湎于享乐主义，陶醉于粗俗的性感音乐，沉迷于毒品，而其家庭生活却支离破碎，凡此种种，都削弱了西方挺身反抗共产主义的意志。（……）更重要的是，艾滋病对所谓的新保守主义所从事的那些主要活动中的一项不无用处，即对所有被笼统地（也是不确切地）称为“六十年代”的一切事物展开“文化战”（Kulturkampf）。 (查看原文)
(Eng. p.161) Not only does AIDS have the unhappy effect of reinforcing American moralism about sex; it further strengthens the culture of self-interest, which is much of what is usually parsed as “”individualism. Self-interest now receives an added boost as simple medical prudence. (查看原文)
(Eng. p.174) Scornful of the jeremiads of the moralists, a rational and humane scientist proposes the minimum consolation: an apocalypse that doesn’t have any meaning. AIDS is a “natural phenomenon,” not an event “with a moral meaning,” Gould points out; “there is no message in its spread.” Of course, it is monstrous to attribute meaning, in the sense of moral judgement, to the spread of an infectious disease. But perhaps it is only a little less monstrous to be invited to contemplate death on this horrendous scale with equanimity. (查看原文)
(Eng. p.175) There is also the need for an apocalyptic scenario that is specific to “Western” society, and perhaps even more so to the United States. (America, as someone has said, is a nation with the soul of a church - an evangelical church prone to announcing radical endings and brand-new beginnings.) The taste for worst-case scenarios reflects the need to master fear of what is felt to be uncontrollable. It also expresses an imaginative complicity with disaster. The sense of cultural distress or failure gives rise to the desire for a clean sweep, a tabula rasa. No one wants a plague, of course. But, yes, it would be a chance to begin again. And beginning again - that is very modern, very American, too.
(Eng. p.175) With the inflation of apocalyptic rhetoric has come the increasing unre... (查看原文)
(Eng. p.176) Every major event is haunted, and not only by its representation as an image (an old doubling of reality now, which began in 1839, with the invention of the camera). Besides the photographic or electronic simulation of events, there is also the calculation of their eventual outcome. (p.177) Reality has bifurcated, into the real thing and an alternative version of it, twice over. There is the event and its image. And there is the event and its projection. But as real events often seem to have no more reality for people than images, and to need to confirmation of their images, so our reaction to events in the present seeks confirmation in a mental outline, with appropriate computations, of the event in its projected, ultimate form. (查看原文)
就目前而言，在个人体验和社会政策方面，主要依靠夺取该疾病的修辞所有权 (the struggle for rhetorical ownership of the illness)，考察它是怎样被纳入论点和陈词滥调之中的，又是怎样被同化于其中的。使疾病获得意义 (p.161) （以疾病去象征最深处的恐惧）并使其蒙受耻辱 (inflict stigma) 的那个过程，相沿已久，似乎不可遏制，但挑战它总还是值得的，而且在现代世界，在那些愿意成为现代人的人们中间，它的可信性似乎越来越有限了——这一过程现已处于审视之下。对于艾滋病这种带来如此之多的犯罪感和羞耻感 (guilt and shame) 的疾病来说，使其从意义、从隐喻中剥离出来，似乎特别具有解放作用 (liberating)，甚至是抚慰作用 (consoling)。
(p.161) 并非所有用之于疾病及其治疗的隐喻都同等地可憎，同等地扭曲。我最希望看到其销声匿迹的那个隐喻——自艾滋病出现后，这种愿望更为强烈——是军事隐喻。它的反面，即公共福利的医疗模式 (the medical model of the public weal)，就其影响 (consequences) 而言或许更危险，也更为深远，因为它不仅为权威制度 (authoritarian rule) 提供了有说服力的正当性，而且暗示国家采取压制和暴力（……） (查看原文)
