Common Immunity: Biopolitics in the Age of the Pandemic

by Roberto Esposito, Zakiya Hanafi (Translator)

After two years of global pandemic, it is no surprise that immunization is now at the center of our experience. From the medicalization of politics to the disciplining of individuals, from lockdowns to mass vaccination programs, contemporary societies seem to be firmly embedded in a syndrome of immunity. 

To understand the ambivalent effects of this development, it is necessary to go back to its modern genesis, when the languages of law, politics, and medicine began to merge into the biopolitical regime we have been living under for some time. This regime places a high priority on immunization and no security is more important than health security. The Covid-19 pandemic has taken the dynamic of immunization to a new for the first time in history, we see societies seeking to achieve generalized immunity in their entire populations through vaccination. This allows us to glimpse the possibility of a “common immunity” that strengthens the relation between community and immunity. The dramatic tensions we have experienced in recent years between security and freedom, norm and exception, power and existence, all refer to the complex relationship between community and immunity, the decisive features of which are reconstructed in this book. 

Building on the prescient argument originally developed two decades ago in  Immunitas , Roberto Esposito demonstrates in this new book how the pandemic and our responses to it have brought into sharp relief the fundamental biopolitical conditions of our contemporary societies.

240 pages, Paperback

Published August 28, 2023

About the author

Roberto Esposito was born in Naples where he graduated at University of Naples 'Federico II'.
He is Vice Director of the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, is Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy and the coordinator of the doctoral programme in Philosophy.
For five years he was the only Italian member of the International Council of Scholars of the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris.
He was one of the founders of the European Political Lexicon Research Centre and the International Centre for a European Legal and Political Lexicon, which was established by a consortium made up of the Universities of Bologna, Florence, Padua, Salerno, Naples L'Orientale and Naples S. Orsola Benincasa.
He is co-editor of Filosofia Politica published by il Mulino, the 'Per la Storia della Filosofia Politica' series for publishers Franco Angeli, the series 'Storia e teoria politica' for publishers Bibliopolis and the series 'Comunità e Libertà' for Laterza.
He is editor of the 'Teoria e Oggetti' series published by Liguori and also acts as a philosophy consultant for publishers Einaudi.