Immunitary Life

Book excerpt: This book explores the growing intellectual interest in the politics of immunity. It argues that taking an ‘immunitary perspective’ is necessary if we are to better appreciate the body as a site of politics in the contemporary age. It explores the dynamic tensions between community and immunity, belonging and fragmentation, the social and the individual. It creates a dialogue between the social sciences, humanities and biopolitical philosophy around immunity. Immunitary Life empirically situates immunitary politics in real-world debates. This includes blood donation and evolving notions of embodied intimacy in the worlds of transplantation. It examines changing ideas about infectivity, bugs, and the emergence of ‘resistance’ in antibiotics. The politics of vaccination offers a classic context for thinking about the ever changing relationships between the communal and the individual. Immunitary Life is essential reading for contemporary scholarship in the sociology of the body and the political philosophy of biomedicine.