Immunity and contagion as two modes of biopolitics

ENThe essay questions the notion of political and biological identity as the main premise of biopolitical philosophy. Foucault, Agamben, and Esposito demonstrated that modern biopolitical theories rest on the distinction between self and non-self, propriety and impropriety, immunity and contagion. In order to confront these biopolitical distinctions, the essay seeks to question the notion of identity and replace it with that of multiplicity or assemblage. Following on from Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas on multiplicity and Esposito’s notion of affirmative biopolitics, the essay seeks to redefine subjectivity as a process of individuation and differentiation, which can accept the elements of non-self. The essay discusses specific examples in bioart and biomedicine which reveal the body as a fusional multiplicity where different molecular populations interact. This interface, or the affective dimension of the body, is understood as an instance of affirmative biopolitics and a positive way to encounter the other.