Esposito, Biopolitics, and the Critique of the Immunity Paradigm in John Lanchester’s The Wall (2019) | ||
| CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education | ||
| Article 4, Volume 85, Issue 1, January 2024, Pages 77-99 PDF (593.67 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/opde.2024.341378 | ||
| Author | ||
| Muhammad Yousri Aql | ||
| Assistant Professor of English Literature Faculty of Al-Alsun, Kafrelsheikh University, Egypt | ||
| Abstract | ||
| This interdisciplinary study aims to explore the biopolitical function of immunity in society with a special reference to John Lanchester’s recent dystopian novel The Wall (2019). It refers to Roberto Esposito’s biopolitical interpretation of the concept of immunity and its relationship to community in which Esposito diagnoses the contemporary political culture with an “immunization paradigm”. Having sketched the key principles of Esposito’s biopolitical conceptualization of the notion of immunity in both its biological and political senses, the paper then investigates the possible areas of contact between his thought and the immunity paradigm represented in Lanchester’s novel by ‘the Wall’. It will be argued then that Lanchester’s Wall stands as a concrete embodiment of what Esposito refers to as an “autoimmune pathology” with a number of featured symptoms, including an autoimmune view of the self and the Other, the decline of tolerance and the proliferation of the culture of barrier-making. Following Esposito, the study concludes that immunity, in its biological and social forms, is not inherently autoimmune, but rather the result of the pathologized relationship between immunity, identity and society. This pathological relationship, fueled by a constant and excessive fear of contamination by the Other that does not almost exist, results in the crisis of coexistence represented in The Wall. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Biopolitics; Border-Making; Esposito; Immunity; Lanchester | ||
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