Brown: biopolítica da imunidade

(…) late modern culture is steeped in a heady mixture of immunitary metaphor, questions of immunitary biosecurity, a politics of resistance, a preoccupation with immune system resilience, the sovereignty of the body, the household and the nation. The immune system coalesces with a geopolitics centred on migration, infection control and surveillance, biotechnological innovation, personal hygiene, nutritional culture and much else besides. Life is therefore unquestionably lived with reference to an ever-widening range of immunitary logics, pressures and factors. Many of us, though certainly not all of us, have received various vaccinations. Those of us who have not been vaccinated may have lived benefiting in some way from those who have. Or we may feel we have escaped the risks of exposure to vaccination. We routinely ‘catch’ colds or flu and live surrounded by coughs, sniffles and other infections. We follow, or not sometimes, instructions about washing our hands after visiting the toilet or before cooking. We all purposefully or indirectly cohabit with bugs that either boost our immunities, forming the basis to our digestion, or threaten to kill us. Most of us have taken antibiotics and quite possibly not completed the prescribed dose. Many of us have spent hours combing small parasitic nits from the scalps of our children. More rarely some of us are presented with the prospect of becoming host to someone else’s tissues, blood or organs. A declining number of us seem to like the idea of donating something of our bodies to others. Some of us are pathologically afraid of door handles or cutlery used or touched by other hands and mouths. Many of us have to avoid certain foods for fear of a rash, irritation, restricted airways, swelling and the prospect of death. From life at its most prosaic to its most dramatic, we live unquestionably immunitary lives.