Immunity and Modernity: Picturing Threat and Protection

International Conference

Immunity and Modernity: Picturing Threat and Protection

May 27-29, 2015

Leuven, Belgium

Organized by

Department of Literary Studies

& Centre for Metaphysics and Philosophy of Culture (Institute of Philosophy),

University of Leuven

Keynote Speakers:
Roberto Esposito
Frédéric Neyrat
Johannes Türk

Bracha Ettinger

(more keynote speakers to be announced)

Argument:

In the past decades, ‘immunity’ has become an increasingly important notion in the study of crucial features of modernity. Several influential theorists have adopted the term ‘immunity’ to describe the attempts, whether positive or problematic, of a community to protect itself from the displacing and deterritorializing effects of modernity. Niklas Luhmann wrote that modern society became increasingly pervaded with immunity mechanisms. Donna Haraway and Ed Cohen have indicated the transmission of a legal and militaristic view on immunity to the individual and social body as the birth of modern biopolitics, while at the same time arguing for the necessity to rethink immunity as a shared process. Jacques Derrida has analyzed diverse phenomena, from sovereignty to democracy, in terms of autoimmunity, which is both a threat and a chance. Roberto Esposito theorizes the complex and sometimes (self-)destructive relationship between immunity and its etymological counterpart community. Peter Sloterdijk describes the spheres of shared interiority that people develop to protect themselves against a threatening ‘outside’.

The notion ‘immunity’ encompasses the diverse attempts that are made to draw a mark between self and other, communal and ‘foreign’, normal and pathological, order and disorder in times of crisis and anxiety about the coherence of the self and/or the community. Yet, theories of ‘immunity’ will also radically question the ways such divisions are marked and rendered operative. For this conference, we are looking for scholars who can clarify the diverse, and sometimes mutually conflicting, attempts to theorize the problem of ‘immunity’ and their possible relevance for the clarification of modernity as an ongoing project, as well as the tendency towards (self-)destructive excess that has always been a part of it. We are also interested in the way the arts (literature, architecture, visual arts…) have taken up the problem of immunity, from artists who have attempted to picture immunity mechanisms to artists who want to problematize the prevailing immunity discourses.

Possible topics include:

- How has ‘immunity’ been theorized by Esposito, Sloterdijk, Luhmann, Derrida, Haraway and others? Are there tensions between these theoretical approaches of immunity or in the theoretical arguments themselves?

- What is the relation between more recent theories of immunity and classic theories such as Nietzsche’s theories of disease and prophylaxis, Freud’s theories of defense and the stimulus shield or Benjamin’s theories about literature and the shocks of modern existence?

- What is the relation between immunity and biopolitics, immunity and technology, immunity and religion, immunity and architecture, immunity and community?

- Can the notion ‘immunity’ help to clarify historical times of crisis and, more importantly, can it contribute to a better understanding of the current crisis? How can it help us to discern threats and possibilities? Can it help us to discern and counter political attempts to abuse the crisis?

- How have artists (writers, poets, painters, architects, film makers…) depicted or problematized the prevailing immunity discourse in their works? Can certain stylistic features (montage, the ‘modernist miniature’, the ‘atlas’,…) be explained as reactions to a crisis of the capacity to ‘read’ modern society, including the ability to discern threat and protection?

Organizing committee:

Joost de Bloois (University of Amsterdam), Stijn De Cauwer (University of Leuven),

Jens De Vleminck (Ghent University), Bart Keunen (Ghent University),

Anneleen Masschelein (University of Leuven), Bart Philipsen (University of Leuven)

Stéphane Symons (University of Leuven), Sjoerd van Tuinen (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Scientific Committee:

Jan Baetens (University of Leuven), Mieke Bleyen (University of Leuven),

Michel Delville (University of Liège), Birgit Kaiser (Utrecht University),

Kathrin Thiele (Utrecht University), Karel Vanhaesebroeck (RITS, ULB)

[email protected]