Immunity
1. How and in what sense can immunization fill that semantic void, that interval of meaning that opens in Foucault’s text between the constitutive poles of the concept of biopolitics, namely, biology and politics? Let’s begin by observing that the category of “immunity,” even in its current meaning, inscribes itself precisely in their intersection, that is, on the tangential line that links the sphere of life with that of right. +
1.
Does “community” refer to democracy? If not, could it or is it too deeply embedded in the conceptual lexicon of the Romantic, authoritarian and racist Right? This is the question, one already asked by American neo-communitarianism, that is emerging again in Europe at the precise moment when, some, especially in France and in Italy, are risking thinking community anew. +
The Image—the Distinct
The image is always sacred—if we insist on using this term, which gives rise to so much confusion (but which I will use initially, and provisionally, as a regulative term in order to set into motion the thought I would like to develop here). Indeed, the meaning of the ‘‘sacred’’ never ceases to be confused with that of the ‘‘religious.’’ But religion is the observance of a rite that forms and maintains a bond (with others or with oneself, with nature or with a supernature). Religion in itself is not ordered by the sacred. (Nor is it ordered by faith, which is yet another category.) +
This epigraph is chosen quite deliberately. I run the risk of its seeming to lend itself to a certain Christian, idealist, and humanist tone, a tone in which it is easy to recognize those well-meaning virtues and values that have loosed upon the world all the things that have driven the humanity of our century to despair over itself, where these values are both blind to and complicit in this letting loose. +
1.
TWENTY YEARS. Twenty years of counter-revolution. Of preventive
counter-revolution.
In Italy.
And elsewhere.
Twenty years of a sleep behind security gates, haunted with security guards. A sleep
of the bodies, imposed by curfew.
Twenty years. The past does not pass. Because war continues. Ramifies. Extends.
In a global networking of local devices. In an original calibration of the subjectivities.
In a new superficial peace. +
