Immunity

1. Immunity Roberto Esposito and the Paradigm of Immunization

2. Biopolitics • Bios = life • Biopolitics = the bringing together of life and politics • For Esposito, ‘no power exists external to life, just as life is never given outside of relations to power. From this angle, politics is nothing other than the possibility or the instrument for keeping life alive.’ (Bios, 46)

3. Immunity • Hobbes = Immunizing yourself fearfully against others • Rousseau = Immunizing yourself to protect your ‘liberties’ • Immunizing in this context means ‘taking out of common’ and protecting oneself from what might be ‘common’: community, society, etc. But it also means defending oneself from that which is deemed as dangerous to what is immunized. • By looking at the ‘restricted-policy’ document it becomes clear how the Coalition are aiming to perpetuate assumptions about fear and liberality. • It also becomes clear how they directed by a paradigm of immunization.

4. Biopolitics and Immunity • As the realm of politics retracts from social life (funding cuts to the welfare state in support of ‘Big Society’ for example – or to comprehensive schools in favour of academies), certain immunities take over from others. • Individuals are no longer immunized against predatory private business interest - man is no longer protected from economic wolves in relation to basic necessities such as food, shelter, education and health (companies like Tesco, buy-to-letters, and the privatization of healthcare are particularly interesting to consider here). • As society immunizes itself against state intervention it becomes subject to other ‘diseases’.

5. Immunity • Immunity is complicit in community; for Esposito you cannot have one without the other. However, if the immunitary paradigm takes over, what it is protecting sometimes becomes rather difficult to determine. • Putting a microscope over the immunitary paradigm allows us to see how it frequently breaks down liberal communal values in favour of biological life and individual or group specific liberties. ‘Human nature’ frequently plays a big part in deciding what to immunize against.

6. What is immunized against? • The Nazis immunized themselves firstly against Jews, Gypsys, homosexuals, the disabled and so on. But this immunisation was also to include the non-German (or even non-Aryan as far as eugenics was concerned) in general. • The Aryan race was theoretically to be immunized against all others. • Neo-liberal capitalism (or free market liberal democracy) immunises itself against state sector workers, single mothers, the poor, the unemployed, the unemployable (including many disabled people), non-commercial enterprise, high taxation for the wealthy, and, in a general sense, anything that gets in the way of making more money. • The individual is to be immunized against anything that would restrict its ability to gain capital (this is not the same as giving everyone equal opportunities to gain capital). • Try to think what ‘competition’ immunizes itself againt.

7. Immune thoughts… • Diplomatic immunity? • Problems of antibiotics? • How does this relate to rigidity, plasticity and flexibility? • How does it relate to the supplement? • Have a look at this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/07/cutting-disabled-ill-people-benefits

8. Essay Guidance • ‘Utilise the developments in sociobiology and philosophy featured in the module’s expansion of the nature/nurture debate in a critique of the assumptions made in the leaked ‘restricted-policy’ document’. • The document can be found here: • http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/interactive/2011/sep/13/leaked-memo-women-coalition-government

9. Introduction • Identify the main assumptions of the document you aim to critique and briefly outline the theoretical perspectives you will use to do so. You will be aiming to apply at least three of the major concepts we have covered in the module (e.g. plasticity, the supplement, immunity, etc) to your critique. A focus on the ethical problems of the document in relation to the theory can also be outlined here.

10. First section • Critique what might be broadly conceived as the ‘natural’ assumptions of the ‘restricted-policy’ document (e.g. that ‘fear’ is the basis of women’s concern with the government). You can be creative here, so if you feel anything implies an assumption then outline what that assumption might be and critique it.

11. Second section • Critique what might be broadly conceived as the ‘nurture’ based assumptions of the ‘restricted-policy’ document (e.g. increasing the symbolic value of women within the system will change their perspective on the government). You can be creative here, so if you feel anything implies an assumption then outline what that assumption might be and critique it.

12. Third section and conclusion • Illustrate how you critiques of the natural and nurture based assumptions of the document relate to one another, particularly locating where they might either support one another or remain antithetical to one another. Conclude with a general statement on the scientific and ethical problems now faced by the document after undergoing critique.