Biocolonial and Racial Entanglements: Immunity, Community, and Superfluity in the Name of Humanity. (May 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Opondo, Sam Okoth
• Other Names: Persaud Randolph B. guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Alternatives. Volume 40:Number 2(2015:May)
• Page Start: 115
• Page End: 132
• Publication Date: 2015-05
• Subjects: superfluity -- immunity -- humanity -- biocolonialism; Globalization -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals; Sociology -- Periodicals; 306.2
• DOI: 10.1177/0304375415589432
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0304-3754

Abstract

Through a reading of Neill Blomkamp's 2009 science fiction/mock documentary District 9 and John le Carré's novel The Constant Gardener, this article illustrates how the acceptance that we are all human has an identity-constituting function that enables bodies and lives to be valued differently with far-reaching implications for both biomedical experiments and experiments with the ethics of cohabitation. More specifically, this article examines biocolonial regimes, "imagined immunities, " and limited sympathies that transform racialized, class-mediated, and transnational vulnerable bodies into experimental labor or biomaterial (hearts, kidneys, and corneas) to be consumed or disposed of as part of life-sustaining and life-administering apparatuses.