TheMaterialismofBiologicalEncounters 55
existingonlyintheir(oftendrastic)materialandself-organizingeffects,
on the individual, collective, material and imaginary levels.^11 A note of
cautionisinorder,however:thechangeIamadvocatinghere,namelyto
refrain fromunderstandingbiologicalencounters(asin diseasessuchas
HIV-AIDS) as direct "expressions" of social structures or cultural
trends,doesnotmeanthattheyhavenorelevancesociallyorculturally.
Among their material effects which have great resonances in the
communities is the process by which moments of radical contingency
have in dialectical fashion time and again produced mechanisms of
control. Even while these regulatory regimes may not always be
effective,they validate a monitoring attitude thatconstantly keepsclose
watchoverallrelevantencountersofhumanlifewiththeoutsideworld.
And indeed, in the course of human history, biological encounters,
resisting regulation themselves, have given rise to a broad range of
regulatory regimes, not only socially and culturally, but also on the
biological level. My discussion later on "the white man's biological
burden" and the "biological turn" (M. Cooper,Life as Surplus74) in
today's''WaronTerror''willfurtherelaboratethatpoint.
Independentlyofitsadministrativepresences,suchamonitoringhas
always been part of the biological make-up of many organisms,
including human beings. This biological watchdog structure is
commonly identified as the immune system, a complex aggregate of
cellular and molecular structures and processes inside human bodies.
Without going into technical detail here, it can be said that the immune
system relies on mechanisms of identification, detection, control and
elimination designed to protect against potential dangers coming to the
body from without. Because it seems to hold in an almost perfect
balance contingency and control of biological encounters, the immune
system has become a central concern also outside the domain of
molecular biology; it rationalizes the fear and loathing of the body's
outside. While for the longest part of human history it was not even
known that the body itself possesses such a monitoring system, the
(^11) The juncture made here between the material and the imaginary recalls the
Althusserian understanding of ideology as "'[r]epresentation' of the [i]maginary
[r]elationship of [i]ndividuals to their [r]eal [c]onditions of [e]xistence" (Améry
andAlthusser162).