はじめによんでください

Against Necropolotics II:

Anthropological Zombie or Anthropology as Zombie existence

Mitzub'ixi Qu'q Ch'ij

★Link to the presentation slides on June 28, 2026 at the Medical School of Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea [Against_Necropolitics2_2026.pdf].

☆one gives voice to what until then had remained silent ---(Blanchot 1987:103)

Previous Presentation: Against Necropolotics -- Prolegomena to deconstruction of Medical Anthropology in situ
 （承前の発表）
Against Necropolotics II:Anthropological Zombie or Anthropology as Zombie existence
 人類学的ゾンビあるいはゾンビ存在としての人類学
Taking as my starting point the encounter with the photograph of “the person who was once Felicia Felix-Mentor”—believed to have been taken by Zora Neale Hurston around 1936 and considered the only surviving photograph of a zombie—I examine the metaphor of infection as it relates to the proliferation of zombies in contemporary society. The topics to be examined are: (1) the characteristics of zombie corporeality; (2) a comparison between proliferating media zombies and real zombies; and (3) the zombie as a mode of existence for the global precariat or those who have lost hope within a postcolonial context. In the current time, where horror and violence are rampant, it describes a situation that moves from Foucault’s “Kill and let live” to “To keep alive or to condemn to death,” and further to “To condemn to death completely”—a situation that can be called necropolitics by Achille Mbembe. Cultural anthropologists should not only treat zombies as subjects of study but also move forward toward a reflective examination of the political power structures within which we encounter zombies—specifically, the negative representation of Haitians—as a representation of the precariat and the multitude in global capitalism implied by zombie representations. 1936年頃にゾラ・ニール・ハーストンが撮影したとされ、現存する唯 一のゾンビの写真とされる「かつてフェリシア・フェリックス＝メンターであった人 物」の写真との出会いを起点として、現代社会におけるゾンビの蔓延に関連する「感染」という隠喩を考察する。検討するテーマは以下の通りである：(1) ゾンビの身体性の特徴、(2) メディア上で増殖するゾンビと実在するゾンビの比較、そして(3) ポストコロニアルな文脈において、グローバル・プレカリアートや希望を失った者たちのための存在様式としてのゾンビ。ホラーと暴力が蔓延する現代におい て、それはフーコーの「殺し、生かす」から「生かし続けるか、死を宣告するか」、さらには「完全に死を宣告する」へと移行する状況を表しており、アシル・ ムベンベが提唱するネクロポリティクスと呼べる状況である。文化人類学者は、ゾンビを単なる研究対象として扱うだけでなく、ゾンビ——具体的にはハイチ人 の否定的な表象——と遭遇する政治的権力構造について、ゾンビの表象が示唆するグローバル資本主義におけるプレカリアートやマルチチュードの表象として、 反省的に検証していくべきである。

☆


 The meaning of “Against Necropolitics I” & “Against Necropolitics II”

Necropolitics refers to a political system that forces the dead to remain silent.

Medical anthropology in the context of necropolitics is an academic endeavor that breaks the silence of the dead and listens to their voices through fieldwork.

Our world can be devided  to the world of the living and the world of the dead.

☆

★


 Against Necropolitics II:
Anthropological Zombie or Anthropology as Zombie Existence
Mitzub’xi Ikeda, University of Osaka, Japan

Summary in Taipei
The previous presentation in Taipei, 2026, was an attempt by medical anthropologists worldwide to collaborate in analyzing, critiquing, and dismantling the necropolitics—the “politics of death”—proposed by Achille Mbembe (2016) that confronts all people globally, to reclaim a future order of “vibrant human health and life.” We do not live in a universe that consists only of living things, but in a pluriverse that consists of both living and dead ones. Medical anthropologists are expected to contribute in some way to the lives and deaths of these people eople all over the world.

Summary in Taipei
Anthro in situ
“Anthropology in situ” refers to research conducted through traditional ethnographic methods, involving fieldwork on-site. Anthropologists have described medical ethnographies from an in-situ point of view. However, for whom do our ethnographies? Necropolitics is now key to deconstruct and remake our ethnography for all the people who were/are/had been suffered. I have adopted the three cases that I have committed: (i) the Repartition of the Human Bone, (ii) the Nazi’s Eugenics, and (iii) Medical Ethics for treating Anti-Vaccination Patients.

We will talk about the Necropolitics of Zombies!

Encountering Real Zombie Photographs

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) conducted fieldwork in Jamaica and Haiti from 1936 to 1937 with support from the Guggenheim Foundation. The result was *Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica* (Japanese title: *The Gods of Voodoo*), published the following year. Within the book is a photograph capturing the “remains (or shell)” of the person who was once Felicia Felix-Mentor. The photograph of the zombie, taken by the author in the courtyard of the Gonâve hospital, shows the figure standing rigidly, gazing directly at the camera while wearing a hospital patient’s gown. Haxton writes with dismay that, standing before the zombie, she had no words to say to her [it], could gain nothing but by looking, and could not bear to gaze upon the figure of that “living corpse” for long.

Felicia Felix-Mentor as a Haitian Zombie from Zora Neale Hurston's "Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica," 1938

There is someone who encountered a zombie. That person is Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960). In her 1938 book *Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica*, she describes the circumstances leading up to the photograph as follows.

In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Felicia Felix-Mentor—who was supposed to have died in 1907—was reported to the Director of Public Health, Luxe Léon, 29 years later, murmuring, “This is my father’s farm. I used to live here,” while wandering around naked. Ultimately, Léon himself diagnosed her and had her committed to a facility (hospital).

Zora Neale Hurston, who had witnessed a Zombie…

Hurston, Zora Neale: 1891-1960, from "Zora Neale Hurston Collection," by Yale University/ Hurston playing a hountar, or mama drum, 1937
https://navymule9.sakura.ne.jp/Zora_Neale_Hurston.html

The Gap Between Real Zombies and Media Zombies
Zombie Walk Paris 2017
Zombies in a Sugarcane Field (Uploaded to Wikipedia on May 5, 2021)
Felicia Felix-Mentor; estimated to have been taken around winter 1936

Zombie exterus

Zombies as an Agent Model

Zombies as an Agent Model

“Zombies” have been represented as imaginary agents [models] that spread and multiply by attacking and harming ordinary living people.

Underlying this are themes of a loss of individuality and non-identity [where no two appearances are alike] (= an ambiguous agent). Drawing on various discourses, including Lauro and Embry’s (2008) “A Zombie z” (→ next slide), let us consider the zombies depicted by Hurston in the mid-1930s—centered on Voodoo beliefs—as the standard model.

Let us consider the “real zombie” as a non-subjective agent—a being resurrected from a corpse by a houngan (Voodoo priest) and put to work in various ways.

Sarah Juliet Lauro; Karen Embry, A Zombie Manifesto: The Nonhuman Condition in the Era of Advanced Capitalism. boundary 2 (2008) 35 (1): 85–108 (1/2)

Focus on the subtitle → Non-human Conditions in the Age of Advanced Capitalism

Influenced by Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto (1985): an antithesis to the perfect, natural body and subject. It advocated for prosthetics and fusion with machines, the affirmation of monstrous existence, and the plasticity of identity.

In response to the Cyborg Manifesto, the authors seek to establish a theory of posthumanism (PH) in opposition to global capitalism. They critique previous forms of PH, arguing that zombie ontology necessitates the death of the subject and implies a shift from ontology to habitation. I felt that the arguments cited pertained more to the death of the subject in postmodernism than to PH itself.

Sarah Juliet Lauro; Karen Embry, A Zombie Manifesto: The Nonhuman Condition in the Era of Advanced Capitalism. boundary 2 (2008) 35 (1): 85–108 (2/2)

However, this is not an attempt to construct a subjectivity that transcends the debate over zombies—who are resurrected from the dead as slaves through Hungan’s sorcery—through the dialectic of life and death. Rather, by positing that the zombie itself is a practice of the dialectic of negation, it rejects the subject/object dichotomy and affirms life (and death) as suspended in limbo.

Rejecting the Enlightenment rationality that treats zombies as objects of fear, they seek to reclaim a “zombie-like modernity” in the post-human era. The authors boldly assert that such an era can only come about with the end of capitalism.

Comment: Although highly abstruse, isn’t this text replete with rhetoric that seeks to cast the “dead subject” (Zombie proletariat?)—which aims for the “end of capitalism”—as the [immortal] subject of that revolution through a paradoxical turn of phrase? A Trotskyist theory of the zombie’s permanent revolution?

Problems with the Zombie Agent Model

William Seabrook (1929), *The Magic Island: Haiti* / Victor Halperin (1932), *White Zombie* / Jacques Tourneur (1943), *I Walked with a Zombie* / George A. Romero (1968), *Night of the Living Dead*, and so on. While zombies have been prominently featured as a theme in novels and films,……

In addition to the previously mentioned Hurston (1938), *Tell My Horse*, there are works such as Melville J. Herskovits (1937), *Life in a Haitian Valley* (Alfred A. Knopf); Maya Deren (1946–1956), *Divine Horsemen*; and Alfred Métraux (1958), *Le vaudou haïtien* (Voodoo in Haiti, 1959). Gallimard. Karen McCarthy Brown (1976), *The Veve of Haitian Vodou*. and so on; almost all ethnographies introducing Haitian voodoo focus primarily on rituals, symbols, communities of believers, and possession, while the zombie cult is touched upon only briefly and has not become a central theme in ethnographic research.

Dissecting the Agent Model: An Analysis of Ambiguity

This, too, highlights the striking disparity between “real zombies” and “media zombies.” The reasons for this disparity are:
1) While zombie beliefs proliferate within the media’s imagination, we never encounter real zombies;
2) As seen in Karen McCarthy Brown’s Mama Lola (1991), Voodoo belief—including phenomena such as possession—is a vibrant religious experience for living people, not an exotic object of fear.
In other words, this indicates that “Media Zombies” have entered a distinct global circulation process as an occult genre detached from its original context (→ the establishment of a division of labor within the field of research).

The Fear of Infection
Sample images from commercial websites https://x.gd/sQ5ko
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2

The Fear of Infection / The Pleasure of Infection, or Issues of Identity (I)

(1) The first characteristic of zombie ontology.
It is said that any victim can be resurrected as a zombie, provided they are not elderly. Their gender or social attributes in life are irrelevant. In that sense, much like infection with COVID-19 [= an agent that gains agency], the chance of infection is not determined by social status but can happen to anyone (= a democratic zombie infection phenomenon).
Since there is a strong connection between the resurrection potion and the soil of the graveyard, people feel aversion toward such contaminated soil. However, there is a sense of helplessness—that while the infection phenomenon can be prevented to some extent, it cannot be completely stopped.

The Fear of Infection / The Pleasure of Infection, or Issues of Identity (II)

The Fear of Infection drags people into a fear of universal sameness with Others—the transformation into a single victim (patient)—and into that fatalism. There, people lose their identities (internal consistency) rooted in individual histories and are universally unified under the identity of a zombie (patient) (zombie identity).

Modern People Who Share a “Zombie Body” Philosophy

(2) The Second Feature of Zombie Ontology
The fear of zombification manifests itself in the impossibility of communication between two parties, as Harston experienced when he encountered the woman formerly known as Felicia. The second feature of ontology is that [it] is a body suspended in limbo, where it is unclear whether it is alive or dead.

Within that “body as a prison”—as Plato described it—there is no mind; it is nothing more than an inorganic entity, like a machine that merely obeys its master’s commands. It lacks the vibrant radiance of life possessed by the living. It is situated in a purgatorial state between life and death.

A replica of the “Tiger Cages” used by the South Vietnamese Army to torture Viet Cong prisoners during the Vietnam War (War Remnants Museum

Haitian Vodou art and its popularization

A painting of Loa Danbara (the snake) by Haitian artist Hector Hippolyte. Hippolyte himself was a houngan.

Representative Media Zombies
The Classic “Media Zombie”: Night of the Living Dead, 1968, directed by George A. Romero

The Classic “Media Zombie”: Night of the Living Dead, 1968, directed by George A. Romero
*Night of the Living Dead* is a 1968 American independent horror film directed, photographed, and edited by George A. Romero; written by Romero and John Russo; produced by Russell Streiner and Carl Hardman; and starring Duane Jones and Judith O’Dea. The story follows seven people trapped in a farmhouse in a rural town in Pennsylvania who are attacked by reanimated corpses. Although the flesh-eating monsters in this film are called “ghouls,” it is considered a seminal work that popularized the modern depiction of zombies in popular culture.

Contradiction of Zombie’s Images
The marked divergence between Haiti’s original “traditional” “real zombies” and “media zombies” (continued from previous section).
Lauro and Embry (2008), authors of the “Zombie Manifesto,” skillfully characterize this as an irreconcilable tension between the victims of global capitalism and the theoretical schools of post-humanism.

Gender difference against Zombies
The Classic “Media Zombie”: Night of the Living Dead, 1968, directed by George A. Romero
Judy peering through the open truck window
Ben, holding a rifle in the farmer's living room
https://navymule9.sakura.ne.jp/Night_of_the_Living_Dead.html

Proliferation of Zombies’ Images

On the other hand, zombies as metaphors not only proliferate within films, dramas, and even video games (Fukuda 2024), but they also sometimes become the subject of philosophical thought experiments (Chalmers 1996). Ultimately, like the authors of the Zombie Manifesto, they become agents of transformation in the post-human era, presaging the end of the capitalist system (→ The Fractal Proliferation of Zombie Delusions).

Zombie as Precariate

The “real zombies” are the precariat of the premodern era, who were subjected to economic and human exploitation during their lifetimes; they embody the harsh reality of the colonial situation, in which they are resurrected through sorcery even after death and forced into labor beyond the limits of what is exploitative.
At the same time, zombie slaves are the lumpenproletariat of the Marxist era—an inevitable consequence of the structural violence of colonialism and racism—and are the precariat of the neoliberal era itself.

Mimetic Imagination

The proliferation of zombie representations as metaphors means that media zombies and real zombies exist simultaneously; yet, strangely enough, there is almost no overlap between them. - Why is this?
Is it due to the autonomous, mimetic proliferation inherent in representation [= virus/genetic information]? Or has a “single relationship = mimesis” been established between two events—unconnected in time or causality—as seen in oral traditions and literary works?

Zombie in situ

Historical Context of Real Zombies
https://www.bbc.com/japanese/53550421

Historical Context of Real Zombies
A sugar mill in Haiti (L'Homme et la Terre by Élisée Reclus, 1830–1905)

7. Zombies as Representations of Postcolonial Negation (I)

inally, let us set aside our ontological analysis for a moment and reexamine zombies as a cultural representation of Haiti within their historical context.

From the U.S. Marine Corps occupation of 1915–1934 onward, through the rampant dictatorship, poverty, and violence, the homophobic panic during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, and the vilification of immigrants in the recent U.S. presidential election, Haiti has remained a repository of postcolonial representations of negation.

Historical Context of Real Zombies
An American poses with dead Haitians killed by U.S. Marine machine gun fire on October 11, 1915

7. Zombies as Representations of Postcolonial Negation (II)

Outside of Haiti, zombies are thriving in zombie studies, which can be described as a rich [virtual] imagination of a peaceful society. We must never forget the striking contrast between the “misfortune of the place of origin” and the “strange euphoria of the place of transplantation,” nor our search for a resolution to this dissonance.

Zombie in & out

Springfield, Ohio, September 2024

In September 2024, a hoax claiming that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets spread online in Springfield, Ohio. The claim originated from a post on a local Facebook group alleging that a local cat had been slaughtered, and it quickly spread among far-right and neo-Nazi groups. The claim was subsequently amplified by prominent figures on the American right, particularly Republican Ohio Senator and vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, followed by presidential candidate Donald Trump, Laura Loomer, and Twitter (X) owner Elon Musk, among others. Later, the author of the original Facebook post and the neighbor who told her the story admitted that it was based on rumors from people they had never even spoken to.

tructural racism against immigrants in the United States

The claim that Haitians eat pets spread amid racial tensions in Springfield, Ohio, where recent legal Haitian immigrants were said to be straining public resources.

After this claim spread, there were dozens of bomb threats targeting schools, hospitals, public facilities, and businesses in Springfield, often accompanied by hate messages directed at Haitians.
The fact-checking website PolitiFact selected this hoax as its annual “Lie of the Year” for 2025.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/politifacts-lie-of-the-year-and-its-impact-on-the-ohio-town-caught-in-the-middle

A Twitter post from the Republican-controlled U.S. House Judiciary Committee on September 9, 2024. It features an AI-generated photo of Donald Trump hugging a cat and a duck, accompanied by the caption, “Protect the ducks and kittens of Ohio!”

The Arizona Republican Party commissioned a billboard modeled after Chick-Fil-A advertising that promotes the false claim that people eat pets

Note: This is a campaign video posted online by the U.S. Republican Party (not actual footage).

Who are Zombies?
We are Zombies!

Addiction and Zombie:
Meta, Google found liable for social media addiction of young users
A US jury has found IT giants Meta and Google responsible for the suffering of a 20-year-old woman who says she became addicted to social media as a child. US media reports say the jury's verdict in a California court on Wednesday ordered the two companies to pay a combined $ 6 million in damages. The jury reportedly found the IT businesses negligent for designing social media apps harmful to young users and failing to warn of the dangers. (NHK March 26,2026)

8. Summary and Conclusion (I)
Taking as my starting point my encounter with the photograph of “the person who was once Felicia Felix-Mentor”—believed to have been taken by Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) around 1936 and considered the only surviving photograph of a real-life zombie—I examined the metaphor of infection as it relates to representations of zombies and the proliferation of zombies in contemporary society.

8. Summary and Conclusion (II)
The repertoire of the “Cultural Anthropology of Plurality and Multiplication,” covering:
1) zombies as agent models;
2) the identity of fear or pleasure in infection;
3) characteristics of zombie corporeality; and
4) A comparison between proliferating media zombies and real zombies.

8. Summary and Conclusion (III)

The hidden title of this presentation, “Zombies as We Anthropologists,” invites not only the study of such zombies as objects of cultural research but also a reflective examination of the political power structures within which we encounter the negative representation of Haitians and the facing a threat to their survival —that is, zombies as representations of the precariat and the multitude within global capitalism and warfare.

We are anthropological zombies!
Who lost our own souls and are forced to work soullessly in our field without compassion for people!

Bibliography

Chalmers, D. 1996.The Conscious Mind, Oxford University Press, New York.
Hurston, Z.N. 1938 [2009] Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. Harper Perennial.
Ikeda, M. 2026. Against Necropolitics: Prolegomena to De/Reconstruction of Medical Anthropology in situ. presentation at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the Taiwan Society for Medical Anthropology, TSMA, in Taipei. Taiwan.
Lauro, S.J. and K. Embry, 2008. A Zombie Manifesto: The Nonhuman Condition in the Era of Advanced Capitalism. boundary 2 , 35 (1): 85–108.
Mbembe, Achille. 2019. Necropolitics, Translated by Corcoran, Steve. Durham: Duke University Press.
Romero, G.A. (dir.) 1968. Night of the Living Dead.

In her/our memory of Felicia Felix-Mentor
as a Haitian Zombie

★Credit: Against Necropolotics I: Prolegomena to deconstruction of Medical Anthropology in situ, presented at the Taipei Medical University, on June 13, 2026.

☆Other Information of the EMAN (East Asian Medical Anthropological Network)

Medical Humanities in the Era of Artificial Intelligence: Technology, Medicine, and Death

In this era of artificial intelligence and digital technology, references to rapid technological development have become almost clichéd—so much so that they often merely convey a sense of being held captive by techno-optimism. This is largely because, despite radical advances in AI, including claims about the imminent establishment of artificial general intelligence platforms, we continue to inhabit a world of social relations grounded primarily in non-technological, or largely humane, connections: eye-to-eye contact, empathic engagement, and everyday civil interactions. Technological hype has existed for millennia in human history, and in this sense it is important to remember that technology consists of artefacts made and controlled by human beings, rather than autonomous entities with their own agency or intentions.

Medicine—the skill, practice and body of knowledge concerned with human life and the body—has long been intertwined with technological development and has taken shape across diverse social and cultural contexts. In most cases, medical progress has been aided by technology, although at times technology has actively initiated new branches of medicine, as in the case of nuclear medicine. While techno-optimism certainly exists and generates its own discourses, medicine has not been fully overtaken by it. This is due in part to the ethical, legal, and moral challenges posed by the introduction of new technologies into medical practice. Or the rhythms and dynamism of embodied human presence, or the nuts and bolts of the infrastructures that constitute medical practice, might simply be restraining the excesses of technological hype within the field.

Death is critical here, as it ultimately serves as the final arbiter of human fate. Despite soaring promises of technological utopia, discussions of death inevitably remain philosophical, and often spiritual. In this sense, engaging with death may be the most profoundly humane practice situated at the intersection of medicine and technology. Death thus exposes a gap within modern medicine, which tends to view it primarily as something to be avoided—particularly in the era of scientific medicine, which has largely severed its ties with religious traditions. And it engages our moral realm and calls us to confront reality stripped of unnecessary trappings, forcing us to understand life in more simplified terms. For this reason, death should not, and indeed cannot, be fully medicalised.

This conference aims to explore the intersection of these themes in their broadest sense, deliberately challenging disciplinary and geographical boundaries. Contributions may address any subject, provided they are grounded in rigorous discussions of the issues outlined above.

Scholars from history, philosophy, ethics, anthropology, and related fields are warmly invited to submit a 200 words abstract of their proposed paper by 20 March 2026 to yonsei.medhumanthro.2026[at]gmail.com.

The conference will be held on 28 June 2026 at Yonsei University School of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea and is jointly organised by the Yonsei Institute of Medical History, the Yonsei University School of Medical Humanities, and the East Asian Medical Anthropology Network(EAMAN).
 人工知能時代の医療人文学：テクノロジー、医学、そして死

人工知能やデジタル技術が普及したこの時代において、急速な技術発展への言及はもはや決まり文句のようになっており、そのあまりに頻繁な言及は、しばしば 単なる「技術楽観主義」に囚われているという印象を与えるに過ぎない。これは主に、汎用人工知能（AGI）プラットフォームの確立が目前に迫っているとい う主張を含むAIの飛躍的な進歩にもかかわらず、私たちが依然として、主に非技術的、あるいは本質的に人間的なつながり——目と目の接触、共感に基づく関 わり、日常的な礼儀正しい交流——に根ざした社会関係の世界に生きているからである。技術に対する過剰な期待は人類の歴史において数千年にわたり存在して きたものであり、この意味で、技術とは独自の主体性や意図を持つ自律的な存在ではなく、人間によって作られ、制御される人工物であることを忘れてはならな い。

医学——すなわち、人間の生命と身体に関わる技術、実践、および知識体系——は、古くから技術開発と密接に絡み合い、多様な社会的・文化的文脈の中で形作 られてきた。多くの場合、医学の進歩は技術によって支えられてきたが、核医学の例に見られるように、技術が積極的に医学の新たな分野を切り拓いたこともあ る。確かに技術楽観主義は存在し、独自の言説を生み出しているが、医学はそれに完全に飲み込まれてはいない。これは、医療実践への新技術の導入がもたらす 倫理的、法的、道徳的な課題に一部起因している。あるいは、身体化された人間の存在が持つリズムやダイナミズム、あるいは医療実践を構成するインフラの根 幹的な仕組みが、単にこの分野における技術的誇大宣伝の行き過ぎを抑制しているのかもしれない。

死はここで極めて重要である。なぜなら、死は最終的に人間の運命を裁く最終的な審判者となるからである。技術的ユートピアへの高まる期待にもかかわらず、 死に関する議論は必然的に哲学的であり、しばしば精神的なものにとどまる。この意味で、死と向き合うことは、医学と技術の交差点に位置する、最も深く人間 的な実践であるかもしれない。したがって、死は現代医学内部の断絶を露呈させる。現代医学は、特に宗教的伝統との結びつきをほぼ断ち切った科学的医学の時 代において、死を主に回避すべきものとして捉える傾向があるからだ。そして死は、私たちの道徳的領域に働きかけ、不必要な装飾を剥ぎ取られた現実と向き合 うよう促し、より単純化された観点から生命を理解することを強いる。このため、死は完全に医療化されるべきではなく、また実際、そうすることはできない。

本会議は、これらのテーマの交差点を最も広義で探求することを目的とし、意図的に学問的・地理的境界に挑むものである。投稿内容は、上記の問題に関する厳密な議論に基づいている限り、いかなる主題でも構わない。

歴史学、哲学、倫理学、人類学および関連分野の研究者の方々には、2026年3月20日までに、発表予定の論文の要旨（200語）を yonsei.medhumanthro.2026[at]gmail.com までご提出いただくよう、心よりお願い申し上げます。

本会議は2026年6月28日、韓国・ソウルにある延世大学医学部にて開催され、延世大学医学史研究所、延世大学医学人文学部、および東アジア医療人類学ネットワーク（EAMAN）が共同で主催します。
Series Introduction: East Asian Medical Anthropology for a Transformative Time
 Newsletter of the Society for medical Anthropology
Bo Kyeong Seo

Creating a new node of intellectual connections shifts the scale of conversation. The old divisions and hierarchies between local and global, domestic and international, native and foreign lose their force when diverse pathways open into a stream of thought that welcomes disruptive encounters. Announcing the formation of the East Asian Medical Anthropology Network(EAMAN) is delightful in this sense, since it marks an attempt to create a space in which various modes of doing medical anthropology can become known to one another.

The hope invested in creating a new network for medical anthropologists residing and working in Asia is that it can make unrealized lines of connection visible and open up new opportunities for collaboration and contestation. It is clear that Asia as a research site has played a significant role in the development of medical anthropology, as several discipline-defining canons are based on research conducted in Asia. Yet what has been lacking is sustained effort in approaching Asia as a site of conceptual and methodological innovation. What futures for medical anthropology emerge when Asia is taken seriously as a site of transformation and praxis? How does medical anthropology, in turn, matter in Asia? What significance has it brought to the region’s rich intellectual history and dynamic public discourses?

Preparing for and convening the first meeting under the banner of the East Asia Medical Anthropology Network (EAMAN) marked a pivotal moment for beginning to ask these questions and search for answers as a collective venture. This meeting was made possible in part through conversations initiated at the Medical Anthropology and Global Korean Studies Conference, held in Seoul in 2024 to mark the 10th anniversary of the Korean Society for Medical Anthropology. By learning more about the institutional development of medical anthropology in China, Japan, and Taiwan, and by confirming the shared willingness to sustain alliances, the plan to hold the network’s first meeting took shape. In this process, the Taiwan Medical Anthropology Society played a crucial role by generously offering space for the newly formed network within its annual meeting.

At this first joint conference in June 2025, two days of an intensive program created a lively atmosphere of exchange and discovery, revealing how key themes in the study of health and illness experiences have evolved along different directions. With both Chinese and English used for presentations, the gathering also offered an opportunity to glimpse how distinctive scholarly lineages have developed in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. The main theme of the conference was ‘super-aged society’ reflecting a major demographic shift now confirmed in both South Korea and Taiwan along the path that Japan already took. The common public health burdens that the demographic shift has brought to these neighboring countries were extensively discussed over the course of this two-day conference, but that’s not everything. What this event brought into view was the extent of innovative discussions and interventions unfolding across the region, many of which have been mostly circulate within national academic spheres. This small collection is intended to document segments of this larger gathering and use them as material to build shared memories of the conversations and identify openings for further inquiry and collaboration. Contributors to this series reflect varied levels of involvement in the network, from those who devoted several years to building the conference’s institutional foundation to a PhD researcher actively engaged in collaborative scholarship through this emerging transnational network. By providing their experiences of conference organization and panel discussions, all the contributors of this series offer an impressive sampler of medical anthropology here and now.


 ボ・ギョンソ[Bo Kyeong Seo]

知的つながりの新たな拠点を創出することは、対話のスケールを変容させる。ローカルとグローバル、国内と国際、自国と外国の間に存在した従来の区分や階層 は、多様な経路が開かれ、破壊的な出会いを歓迎する思考の流れへとつながるにつれ、その力を失っていく。東アジア医療人類学ネットワーク（EAMAN）の 結成を発表できることは、この意味で喜ばしい。なぜなら、それは医療人類学を実践する様々な様式が互いに知られ合う場を作り出そうとする試みを示すものだ からである。

アジアに居住し活動する医療人類学者のための新たなネットワークを構築することに込められた期待は、これまで顕在化していなかったつながりの糸を可視化 し、協働や議論のための新たな機会を切り開くことにある。アジアという研究現場が医療人類学の発展において重要な役割を果たしてきたことは明らかであり、 この学問分野を定義づけるいくつかの規範は、アジアで行われた研究に基づいている。しかし、これまで欠けていたのは、アジアを概念的・方法論的革新の場と して捉えるための持続的な取り組みであった。アジアが変容と実践の場として真剣に捉えられたとき、医療人類学にはどのような未来が浮かび上がるのか？　逆 に、医療人類学はアジアにおいてどのような意義を持つのか？　それは、この地域の豊かな知的歴史やダイナミックな公共的言説にどのような意義をもたらして きたのか？

「東アジア医療人類学ネットワーク（EAMAN）」の旗印の下で第1回会合の準備と開催を行ったことは、これらの問いを提起し、共同の取り組みとして答え を探求し始めるための決定的な瞬間となった。この会合は、2024年に韓国医療人類学会の設立10周年を記念してソウルで開催された「医療人類学とグロー バル韓国学会議」で始まった対話によって、部分的に実現したものである。中国、日本、台湾における医療人類学の制度的発展について理解を深め、連携を維持 するという共通の意志を確認することで、ネットワーク初の会議開催計画が具体化した。この過程において、台湾医療人類学会は、年次総会の中でこの新設ネッ トワークに会場を快く提供し、極めて重要な役割を果たした。

2025年6月に開催されたこの初の合同会議では、2日間にわたる充実したプログラムを通じて、活発な交流と発見の場が生まれ、健康と疾病体験の研究にお ける主要なテーマが、それぞれ異なる方向へとどのように発展してきたかが明らかになった。発表は中国語と英語の両方で行われ、日本、韓国、台湾においてい かに独自の学術的系譜が形成されてきたかを垣間見る機会ともなった。本会議の主要テーマは「超高齢社会」であり、これは日本がすでに辿った道筋に沿って、 現在韓国と台湾の両方で確認されている大きな人口構造の変化を反映したものである。この人口構造の変化が近隣諸国にもたらした共通の公衆衛生上の課題につ いては、2日間にわたる会議の中で広範に議論されたが、それだけではない。このイベントが浮き彫りにしたのは、この地域全体で展開されている革新的な議論 や取り組みの広がりであり、その多くはこれまで主に各国の学術界内でしか共有されていなかったものです。この小冊子は、この大規模な集まりの一端を記録 し、それをもとに議論の共有された記憶を構築するとともに、さらなる探究と協働への可能性を見出すための資料とすることを目的としています。本シリーズへ の寄稿者は、会議の組織的基盤構築に数年を費やした人々から、この新興の越境ネットワークを通じて共同研究に積極的に取り組んでいる博士課程の研究者ま で、ネットワークへの関与の度合いは様々である。会議の運営やパネルディスカッションでの経験を共有することで、本シリーズのすべての寄稿者は、現代にお ける医療人類学の印象的な一端を提示している。
Kwanwook Kim’s essay sets East Asia’s technology-driven industrial innovation as a central point for medical anthropological intervention. When Japan’s public and scholarly response to the detrimental effects of overwork, South Korean researchers’ long struggle to prove toxic exposure in Samsung’s semiconductor factories, anthropological focus on female call-center workers’ emotional labour, and Taiwan’s interdisciplinary scholarship on TSMC workers’ psychological distress and environmental toxicity are drawn together, an incredible synergy emerges for forging new alliances and solidarities. Inter-Asia connections require more rigorous intellectual investment because they are at the heart of technological innovation where capitalist accumulation changes its modalities through laboring bodies.

Minsu Yoo provides an interesting reflection on how developing a new kind of therapy entails multiple boundary crossings. By illuminating tensions that arise when psychedelic-assisted therapies are adopted in East Asian contexts, she introduces different affective landscapes: an advocate’s home, a leading clinic adopting the use of psychoactive substances, and conference spaces. Interests and disagreements around the efficacy of psychedelic treatments reveal how East Asian modernities have been shaped by historical projects that position biomedicine as a ‘scientific’ enterprise guaranteeing truth, alongside the creation of infrastructures that sustain biomedical rationalities. Eastern psychedelic movements are not the mirror image of their Western counterparts, but rather loci where multiple modes of knowing and global connections embedded within Asian modernities generate new friction.

In enabling transnational dialogues, which language is used matters. Although sinospheric legibility has enabled multiple forms of communication and understanding among conference participants, English remains the primary medium of communication. The first gathering for the new network confirmed that the question of how multiple linguistic practices might coexist needs to be more seriously discussed in the future. Despite such inadequacy, one key possibility that emerges from this gathering is that conference participants’ work of translation is not a simple extension of Anglophone knowledge-making project. Switching languages for communication is a forward-looking endeavor that opens new access to scholarship and activism that do not typically unfold in English. Even in an era when AI offers instant and smooth translation in digital spaces, creating a physical space where participants must switch languages in face-to-face communication, despite inevitable hesitations and improvisations, has proven incredibly joyful and productive in fostering mutual understanding and solidarity.

This possibility is well captured by Makoto Nish’s elaboration of Japanese scholars’ close engagement with the inter-relation between disability support and elderly care. Activists and practitioners’ testimonies and works on disability rights in Japan have a special position in East Asia, since they have become an important reference point for imagining and expanding the independent living movement in neighboring countries. In contrast, what is less well known is how Japanese medical anthropologists have been involved in this crucial legacy. By providing his personal memories of the sedimented impacts of a long struggle toward deinstitutionalization in Japan, he introduces a body of work that investigates how the value attached to independence and the socialization of care duties have encountered new challenges amid the combined effects of population aging and insurance restructuring.

Learning each other’s work and having meaningful engagement can only happen through sustained efforts to create a solid organizational ground for transnational encounters. Shao-hua Liu offers the brief history of how medical anthropology has gained traction in Taiwan along with her intellectual trajectory that has led her to acknowledge the crucial importance of inter-Asia communication and to actively shape this network. In anticipating future directions for this nascent network of medical anthropologists, perhaps it is important to note that this gathering has become possible through the female leadership and several people’s connective labor. This aspect also signals the hope that more feminist thought and feminist modes of engagement will further take root and flourish within the network.

Creating a shared thinking space is indeed a way of creating a space for discovery. With the formation of the East Asia Medical Anthropology Network, the conversation expected to emerge is not one that confirms existing regional divisions and national identities, but rather one that engages the contested geographical and racial formation of ‘Asia’ through medical anthropology. The network’s growth will also require a collective process of disrupting the hold of the discipline’s old habits and dominant infrastructure. Several interventions addressing medical anthropology’s historic whiteness and Euro- and US-centrism have shown that these traits persist unless alternative ways of diversifying centers and relating to each other’s work are actively cultivated. What is required is deliberate attention to distinctive intellectual genealogies, theoretical frameworks, and methodological commitments that have long gone unnoticed or been deemed less worthy. The people encountered through this network will bring different baggage, and their active exchange may open up a new square of intellectual connection and critical thinking.

Author Bio: Bo Kyeong Seo is Underwood Distinguished Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Yonsei University. Her research explores multiple dimensions of the politics of care in relation to medical infrastructure, populism, and queer struggles. She is the author of Eliciting Care: Health and Power in Northern Thailand (also translated into Korean as 돌봄이이끄는 자리) and 휘말린 날들: HIV, 감염, 그리고 질병과 함께 미래짓기 (Whirling Days: Living with HIV in South Korea).
 キム・クァンウクの論考は、東アジアにおける技術主導型の産業革新を、 医療人類学的な介入の中心的な焦点として位置づけている。過労の有害な影響に対する日本の世論や学界の反応、サムスンの半導体工場における有害物質への曝 露を立証するための韓国人研究者たちの長きにわたる闘い、コールセンターの女性労働者のエモーショナル・レーバーに焦点を当てた人類学的研究、そして TSMC労働者の心理的苦痛と環境毒性に関する台湾の学際的研究が結びつくとき、新たな連帯と協力関係を築くための驚くべき相乗効果が生まれる。アジア間 のつながりは、資本主義的蓄積が労働する身体を通じてその様相を変える技術革新の核心にあるため、より厳格な知的投資を必要とする。

ユ・ミンスは、新しい種類の療法を開発することがいかにして複数の境界を越えることを伴うかについて、興味深い考察を提示している。東アジアの文脈でサイ ケデリック支援療法が導入される際に生じる緊張関係を浮き彫りにすることで、彼女は異なる感情の風景——提唱者の自宅、向精神薬の使用を取り入れた主要な クリニック、そして会議の場——を紹介している。サイケデリック治療の有効性をめぐる関心や意見の相違は、東アジアの近代性が、生物医学を「科学的」な事 業として位置づけ、真実を保証するものとする歴史的プロジェクトと、生物医学的合理性を支えるインフラの構築によっていかに形作られてきたかを明らかにし ている。東アジアのサイケデリック運動は、西洋のそれの鏡像ではなく、むしろアジアの近代性に埋め込まれた多様な知の様式とグローバルなつながりが、新た な摩擦を生み出す場なのである。

国境を越えた対話を可能にする上で、どの言語が用いられるかは重要である。中国語圏の共通言語性が会議参加者間の多様なコミュニケーションと相互理解を可 能にしたとはいえ、英語が依然として主要なコミュニケーション手段となっている。この新たなネットワークの初会合は、多様な言語的実践がいかに共存し得る かという問いについて、今後より真剣に議論する必要があることを確認した。こうした不十分さにもかかわらず、この集まりから浮かび上がる重要な可能性の一 つは、会議参加者の翻訳作業が、単に英語圏の知識生産プロジェクトの延長線上にあるものではないということである。コミュニケーションのために言語を切り 替えることは、通常英語では展開されない学術研究や活動への新たな道を開く、先見性のある取り組みである。AIがデジタル空間で瞬時かつ滑らかな翻訳を提 供する時代にあっても、参加者が対面コミュニケーションにおいて言語を切り替えなければならない物理的な空間を創出することは、避けられない躊躇や即興的 な対応にもかかわらず、相互理解と連帯を育む上で、信じられないほど喜びに満ちた生産的なものであることが証明された。

この可能性は、障害支援と高齢者ケアの相互関係に日本の研究者が深く関わってきたことを西真如氏が詳述した点によく表れている。日本における障害者の権利 に関する活動家や実践者の証言や活動は、近隣諸国における自立生活運動を構想し拡大するための重要な参照点となっているため、東アジアにおいて特別な位置 を占めている。対照的に、あまり知られていないのは、日本の医療人類学者がこの重要な遺産にどのように関わってきたかという点である。西誠氏は、日本にお ける脱施設化に向けた長きにわたる闘争がもたらした、深く根付いた影響についての個人的な回想を提示することで、高齢化と保険制度の再編が相まって生じた 影響の中で、自立への価値や介護義務の社会化がいかに新たな課題に直面しているかを考察する一連の研究を紹介している。

互いの研究を学び、有意義な関わりを持つことは、国境を越えた出会いのための強固な組織的基盤を築くための持続的な努力を通じてのみ実現し得る。劉紹華 は、台湾において医療人類学がいかに勢いを増してきたかという簡潔な歴史を提示するとともに、アジア間のコミュニケーションの決定的な重要性を認識し、こ のネットワークを積極的に形成するに至った自身の知的軌跡を語る。この萌芽期の医療人類学者ネットワークの今後の方向性を展望するにあたり、今回の集まり が女性のリーダーシップと数名の「つなぐ労働」によって可能になったことを指摘しておくことは重要だろう。この点はまた、より多くのフェミニスト的思考や フェミニスト的な関与の在り方が、このネットワーク内でさらに根を下ろし、花開くという希望をも示唆している。

共有された思考の場を創り出すことは、まさに発見のための場を創り出すことである。東アジア医療人類学ネットワークの形成に伴い、そこから生まれると期待 される対話は、既存の地域的区分や国家的アイデンティティを肯定するものではなく、むしろ医療人類学を通じて、「アジア」という議論の的となっている地理 的・人種的形成と向き合うものである。また、ネットワークの成長には、この学問分野の古い慣習や支配的なインフラの支配を打破する集団的なプロセスも必要 となる。医療人類学の歴史的な「白人中心主義」や欧米中心主義に取り組むいくつかの介入は、中心を多様化し、互いの研究と関わるための代替的な方法が積極 的に育まれない限り、これらの特性が根強く残存することを示している。求められているのは、長い間見過ごされてきたり、価値が低いと見なされてきた独自の 知的系譜、理論的枠組み、方法論的コミットメントに、意図的に注目することである。このネットワークを通じて出会う人々はそれぞれ異なる背景を持ち、彼ら の活発な交流は、知的つながりと批判的思考の新たな場を切り拓くかもしれない。

著者略歴：ソ・ボギョンは延世大学文化人類学科のアンダーウッド特別教授である。彼女の研究は、医療インフラ、ポピュリズム、クィアの闘争に関連して、ケ アの政治学の多面性を探求している。著書に『Eliciting Care: Health and Power in Northern Thailand』（韓国語版『돌봄이 이끄는 자리』）および『휘말린 날들: HIV, 감염, 그리고 질병과 함께 미래짓기』（『Whirling Days: Living with HIV in South Korea』）がある。

★Link to the presentation slides on June 28, 2026 at the Medical School of Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea [Against_Necropolitics2_2026.pdf].

☆one gives voice to what until then had remained silent ---(Blanchot 1987:103)

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