Immunological Discourse in Political Philosophy

Inge Mutsaers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317118503
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Given the propensity of contemporary protection measures such as counterterrorism efforts and fierce protection strategies against viral threats, as well as physical and legal barriers against migration, a number of political philosophers, including Peter Sloterdijk and Roberto Esposito, have claimed that contemporary (political) culture can be characterised by a so-called 'immunisation paradigm'. This book critically examines the intricate entanglement between biological immunological notions and their political philosophical appropriation, whilst studying the 'immunisation response' to recent viral threats, including the Swine Flu pandemic of 2009 and the lab-bred Avian flu threat of 2012, to analyse immunisation as a biopolitical strategy. Offering insights into to the polarising tendencies in contemporary political culture resulting from the appropriation of immunological concepts in political thought, the author also shows how political philosophers tend to build on purely defensive understandings of immunity. As such, Immunological Discourse in Political Philosophy constitutes a theoretically sophisticated critique of the 'semantic trap' caused by the use of immunological concepts in political philosophy. Arguing for a more versatile and less defensive immunological repertoire, which allows for the development of alternative and less polarised forms of political debate, this book will appeal to scholars of political theory, sociology, philosophy and science and technology studies.

Chapter 1

Introducing the Relation between Biology and Politics

Introduction

The mass media of the past decade have been filled with discussions about protectionist measures and the effectiveness of those measures. In response to the rise and rapid spread of the power and terror of the Islamic State (Isis), the US, along with a coalition, has waged an intensified air campaign against Isis brigades in Syria and Iraq since August 2014. The US-led air strikes in northern Syria gave rise to intense debate about whether the strategy of aerial bombardment was sufficient to interrupt the advance of Isis fighters, raising questions about the Western strategy for defeating the terror movement (Letsch, C. et al., 2014). A few years earlier, in 2013, there was much debate on the espionage activities on the part of the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) and other similar organisations. Allegedly in defence of its country, and notably in support of military operations against terrorism, the NSA had collected information on several political leaders of NATO allies, but also on people deemed potential Muslim ‘radicalisers’, potential terrorists, and so on (Schmidt, 2013). In response, some of the US’s closest allies demanded explanations from the American government after disclosures about the scope and sophistication of the American espionage activities. The angry allegation by several European countries that the NSA was spying on their political leaders reveals the downsides of such activities (Sanger and Mazzetti, 2013). In tracking terrorists, the US has risked undercutting its cooperation with important partners.

Espionage and air strikes are not the only protectionist tendencies currently dominating the global scene. Other protectionist tendencies for example include security measures at airports and many other places, measures against viral threats, and new physical as well as legal barriers against migration. These convey the biopolitical tendencies of contemporary Western cultures. Not only human bodies as such, but also the political and legal entities they inhabit are seen as vulnerable in the face of emerging threats.

The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk claims that immunisation is the core concept by which the most dominant political tendencies of today can be described. He draws a parallel between the immune system of the biological body – understood as a system that protects humans from disease – and an immune system that operates on a societal level. Processes of globalisation and technological development have resulted in increased perception of risks, resulting in an obsession with safety, or, in Sloterdijk’s words, with immunisation (Sloterdijk, 2004, p. 208). He claims that at all levels of society immune systems have become the central focus of concern (Sloterdijk, 2004, pp. 195, 208). A number of philosophers seem to agree with Sloterdijk’s view. The Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito for instance, argues that contemporary society is characterised by an immunisation paradigm (Esposito, 2008, 2011). With this he means that the demand for protection progressively extends to all sectors and languages of life. In contemporary society, he claims, the ‘immunitarian dispositif’ has expanded from the sphere of infectious diseases to the political, judicial, technological and social sphere (Esposito, 2008, p. 52).

The immune system is a system of biological structures and processes within an organism that protects against disease. Both Sloterdijk and Esposito translate this biological notion into a philosophical category. Apparently, both philosophers agree that the notion of immunisation is increasingly relevant for assessing the contemporary’s biopolitical situation. It articulates the current Zeitgeist. Other philosophers studying this phenomenon have included Jean Baudrillard, Byung-Chul Han, and Jacques Derrida. In part, they follow similar lines of argumentation, but make use of different biological immunological notions. This book will critically examine the use and usefulness of immunological models in contemporary political philosophy for assessing and analysing contemporary political culture. More particularly, it unravels the intricate entanglement between biological immunology and its philosophical appropriations.

This introduction will first outline a history of the conceptual exchange between biology and politics. Then, it will shift to the use of virological and immunological discourse in particular as reflected in the scientific, social-scientific and public realm. It will show how in the wake of social scientists (such as Donna Haraway), the immune system has attracted increased attention from philosophers as well. Before the philosophical immunological theories are discussed, some recent biopolitical developments will be briefly analysed, because they have played an important role in the increasing use of immunological discourse within political philosophy. In the last part of this chapter, an overview of the approach and research design is presented.

Biology as Politics / Politics as Biology

The co-mingling of political and biomedical languages builds on a long history. Throughout human history, there have been countless instances of interaction, ‘contamination’ and exchange of concepts and ideas between biology and politics. The human body, for example, has been a potent and persistent metaphor for social and political arguments. The ancient Greeks were already familiar with the idea of comparing the human body to the body of the polis (state). In Timeaus, Plato envisions a basic concordance between the macrocosm of the natural world and the microcosm of the human body. In The Republic, he makes an analogy between the tripartite division of the soul and of the political state. The rational element of the soul is the psychological corollary of the guardian class, the spiritual part is analogous to military auxiliaries, and the diverse appetitive organs correspond to the productive forces, i.e. workers, farmers and peasant classes (Purshouse, 2006, p. 60). This basic method of comparing the body natural and the body politic influenced many later articulations of the body politic from the works of Aristotle to the writings of mediaeval thinkers such as John of Salisbury, and modern thinkers, of whom Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are most renowned.

Just as the organic body is the metaphor for the healthy state, for Plato and others, sickness has functioned as a metaphor for disorder in the unhealthy state. Ancient Greek cities were thus not only plagued by sickness and death in the biomedical sense, they were also subject to a range of symbolic and metaphorical diseases. Apart from philosophy, this image can also be found in ancient Greek literature, in the works of, for example, Solon and Theogenis (Brocke, 2000, p. 24). In antiquity, the medical metaphor did not entail much anatomical detail: the body politic was notably articulated by distinguishing the head, as the seat of authority, from the rest of the body (Brocke, 2000, p. 25).

For ancient medical views of the body, the works known as the Hippocratic Corpus were an important source of information. In Hippocratic medicine, nosos was the term to describe disease in general (Lloyd, 1983, p. 100). Greek doctors apparently did not yet identify specific infectious diseases. According to the Hippocratic tradition, illnesses emerge as much from the imbalance of natural conditions (e.g. weather) as from the imbalance in the constitution of the individual’s body (Cohen, 2009, p. 4).

John of Salisbury (1120–1180) described tyranny as a disease in the body politic. He proclaimed that the body politic, like the human body, is vulnerable to infectious diseases (John of Salisbury, 1990; see also Thacker, 2005). The Arab historiographer Ibn Khaldūn (1332–1406) provided for an alternative view on the body politic in which the body politic has a ‘lifetime’ including birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age and death. For Khaldūn, the human lifecycle is reflected in the life cycle of dynasties (Fromherz, 2010).

In modernity, Hobbes compared a range of illnesses (epidemics, fevers, parasites, even demonology) to political afflictions such as internal civil strife, dissent and disobedience. The absence of an absolute and secular sovereignty in the body politic leads to the ‘infirmities’ and ‘diseases’ of the body natural: ‘Amongst the Infirmities therefore of a Common-wealth, I will reckon in the first place, those that arise from an Imperfect Institution, and resemble the diseases of a natural body’ (Hobbes, 1998, p. 197).

After Hobbes, Locke described the breakdown of legislation in a similar vein in terms of dissolution and death (Locke, 1988; see also Thacker, 2005), and Rousseau noted that ‘the body politic, like the human body, begins to die from the very moment of its birth, and carries within itself the causes of its destruction’ (Rousseau, 1988, p. 194). The analogies between the human and the political body reinforce a view on the body politic as a natural, organic phenomenon. The main task of the body politic was to preserve the life and health of the individual physical bodies that inhabit the political body. Accordingly, disease was the lens through which dissent in the body politic was interpreted (Thacker, 2005).

The comparison of society to a body or an organism works both ways: it also involves a comparison of the organism to society. In that case a concept of sociological and political origin is applied in order to explain the nature of disease. This reverse view also goes back to antiquity: in ancient Greece, Alcmaeon of Croton interpreted the disequilibrium caused by disease as revolt (Canguilhem, 2012, pp. 67–9).

Where in antiquity the natural body in general functioned as an analogy for political situations, in the course of history this metaphor has been ‘refined’ and has become increasingly specific. Political systems have been compared with specific bodily components, processes or diseases, and, vice versa, political theories have been used to explain specific biological concepts and processes.

The mutual comparison between bodies and societies gained momentum due to the discovery of cells as the basic components of bodily tissues. In 1665 Robert Hooke (1635–1703) discovered the cell. In the second half of the nineteenth century, when cell theory became more widely accepted, Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), a German physician, anthropologist, and politician, used the metaphor of the liberal state in advancing his theory of the cell as the fundamental unit of life. He regarded organisms, first and foremost, as ‘multicellular’, and accordingly he saw the body as a ‘republic’ or a ‘unified commonwealth’ (Sontag, 1988, p. 7). Later on, Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) adapted and further popularised Virchow’s metaphors and even spoke of a ‘Cell State’, and a ‘Republic of Cells’ to designate the body of a multicellular living being (Canguilhem, 2012, p. 68; Haeckel, 1883). In the liberal and socialist economies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an analogy was drawn between the social phenomenon of the division of labour and its effects on biology: physiologists spoke about the division of labour concerning the cells, the organs, and the devices that make up a living body (Canguilhem, 2012, p. 68).¹

The interpretation of social phenomena in terms of biological concepts, has, at times, also assumed pejorative connotations. No doubt the most notorious example is the uptake of Social Darwinism by the Nazis’ race-hygiene programs and their catastrophic consequences (Maassen, Mendelsohn and Weingart, 1994). The ideological danger of this use is not simply a danger carried along by a one-way-use of biological notions for political goals. In Darwin’s case, for instance, it was in fact the sociologist Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ when formulating his theory of ‘natural selection’. Thus, one of the most influential sociobiological theories was originally developed from social notions, which were transferred into biology, and after that they were reified as laws of nature and reapplied to the interpretation of society (Maassen et al., 1994, pp. 193–229). Claude Lefort (1924–2010), a French philosopher and activist, also pointed to the downsides or risks of the organicist model of society. Thus, caution should be taken in attributing such hybrid bio-sociological concepts.

For Lefort, the ‘body politic’ with the king as its head is not merely a convenient metaphor. Rather it is the phantasmic means by which the nation becomes a unity (Flynn, 2005, p. 110). In Lefort’s view, at the foundation of totalitarianism lies the idea of the representation of the ‘People-as-One’ (Flynn, 2005, p. xxvi). In a totalitarian society there can be no internal division other than between the people and their enemies. Lefort insists on the fact that the constitution of the ‘One-people’ necessitates the incessant production of enemies. In order to ensure its proper functioning and maintain its unity, all the social conflicts that continue to exist are projected onto the outside, onto the evil Other, the enemy: Jews, mentally disabled people, gypsies, or homosexuals – those who are not really part of the people (Flynn, 2005, pp. 213–14). Based on this logic, Stalin launched his attack on the Jews of the USSR and Mussolini had declared that the bourgeois would be eliminated in Italy after World War II. Once these enemies are eliminated, new enemies need to be invented. Flynn shows how the pursuit of the enemies of the people is carried out in the name of ‘social prophylactics’ (Flynn, 2005, p. 214). What is at stake is the very integrity of the body politic. It continually constitutes its integrity through incessant campaigns of terror against the enemy or ‘the other’, against that which would disrupt ‘the phantasmic unity of the “People-as-One”’ (Flynn, 2005, pp. 214, 266).

Socio-cultural Dimension of Viral and Immunological Discourse

At the end of the nineteenth century, the discovery of microbes as the cause of disease, due to the pioneering efforts of Pasteur, Koch and others, had a profound influence on many other areas. In those days, as Michel Serres discusses in his book Hermes IV: La Distribution (1977), the language of contagion or infection began to function as an ‘infectious’ metaphor and turned up in scientific and public, as well as philosophical discourses (Serres, 1977, pp. 173–210). The trope of infection has functioned and still functions as an integral part of the discourse of cultural contact. Concepts from the field of infectious diseases, such as contagion, contamination, disease, epidemics, bacteria, etc., have always proved appropriate metaphors for travel, mobility, and migration (Kraut, 1994; Mayer, 2007).

In our time, metaphors of ‘contagion’ are still widely used. It seems that the ‘virus’ in particular has become a central figure in thinking and writing. It conveys the contagiousness, danger, unpredictability and potentially devastating effects of cultural objects and processes considered to be a threat to society. The virus as a trope is particularly used in contemporary discussions and reflections on terrorism, but nowadays even ‘carriers of’ Islam (i.e., Muslims) are sometimes portrayed as ...