Immunopolitics, immunosociality, and production of failing forms of life

Roberto Esposito defines the immunopolitical threat as follows: 'someone or something penetrates a body - individual or collective - and alters it, transforms it, corrupts it' (Esposito, 2017). Therefore, the collective body involved in immunopolitics must perceive such involvement as an opportunity to resist a change through recognition of the threat. However, I intend to show that immunopolitics instead leads to alterations and transformations through the production and stabilization of ignorance. Immunopolitics produces new ‘failing forms of life' (Jaeggi, 2018) which is in many ways unable to learn, incapable to recognize the agency of human and non-human others.

The centers of immunopolitical gravity are constantly redefining the biological and the social. And in so doing, they obscure both the biological and the social. As a result, this form of life suffers from a reflexive deficit in relation to the social and the biological. Thus, a new biosociality or immunosociality emerges. It blurs the boundaries of objects and groups, constantly substitutes the biological for the social and vice versa, produces vague threats and fear of transformation without defining what it means to stay the same. Drawing on two cases, I will demonstrate how such immunosociality works:

1. The debate about human genome editing in Russia in 2019. The original biomedical goal of preventing hereditary deafness was very little mentioned in the debate. Families with hereditary deafness did not participate in it. While the global prospect of using genome editing for creation of ’hostile others' became a major topic. The immunopolitical threat remained unrecognized, while what could easily be discovered - the need of real families for the procedure - remained buried in silence.
2. Discussion about the use of methadone substitution therapy for drug addicts in Russia in 2018. Questions about the biomedical norm and the full recovery of drug addicts displaced the original discourse of social adaptation. The main biomedical argument that substitution therapy is not a cure presupposes the ‘social’ production of the drug user as a 'hostile other' with no recognizable goals. The immunopolitical threat is ominous but not clear. The form of life established by the debate is incapable to see and understand both the biomedical and social problems of drug users. Therefore those who are afraid of change become partially blind.

Zoom link : https://epfl.zoom.us/j/66516277875