Multiculturalism as a Mode of Immunising the Body of Liberalism
Multiculturalism as a Mode of Immunising the Body of Liberalism
This chapter explains the usage of Esposito’s concept of the immunity paradigm, and how it is operationalised to talk about multiculturalism. It begins with an account of Esposito’s theory on community and how it is linked to the notion of immunity – focusing mainly on his books Communitas and Immunitas. Immunisation is a protective reaction against a risk that exists on the border between inside and outside – it is the partial incorporation of that external risk to strengthen the body. The chapter argues that liberals perceive of non-liberal culture as such a risk, and that liberal multiculturalism consists of a series of processes that partially incorporate the other in order to strengthen liberalism. In order to further illustrate what this means Esposito’s work is connected to Kristeva’s work on abjection and Foucault’s work on delinquency – arguing that what happens to actual subjects who become subject to an immunitary operation is that they are precisely constructed as abject and delinquent.
Keywords: Immunity, Roberto Esposito, Abject, Julia Kristeva, Delinquency, Michel Foucault
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