La imaginación política de la inmunidad. Del "cuerpo social" a la "comuna del cuerpo"

Abstract

In this paper we analize two literary texts by Diamela Eltit: "Colonizadas" (2009) and Impuesto a la carne (2010). We will base our analysis in the theoretical works of some of the most important philosophers in the last decades, such as Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway or Roberto Esposito. Specifically, in dialogue with the category of "immunity" (as a biopolitical category) proposed by Esposito, we will come to the conclusion that Eltit's texts point out some of the keys of the political imagination of our time. Firstly, from the image of a world turned into a hospital, in which (bio)power and (bio)medicine are mixed up and reach all the areas of life; and secondly, from an ensemble of corporal images, which go from sick bodies to the "body's commune", the narratives of the chilean writer bring to scene an imagination that could be recognized as the political imagination of immunity. These images, however, not only help us to understand the way in which this imagination work (since it comes from a specific way of governenment), but also offer us the keys —and this is our hypothesis— to question it and transform it. According to our interpretation of Impuesto a la carne, this way could be the one which leads us from the image of an immunized "social body" to the image of a "body's commune".