56 RüdigerKunow
system has now "risen to eminence in Euro-American culture today"
where it serves as an iconic figure "function[ing] culturally as the key
guarantor of health and the key mark of differential survival for the
twenty-firstcentury"(Martin 327-29).^12 Fromacultural-criticalpointof
view, Derrida's use of the immune system as a concept metaphor for
contemporary forms of terrorism deserves a brief notice here. Referring
to the 9/11 attacks, he identifies such acts as a form of "suicidal,
autoimmunitaryaggression"("Autoimmunity"95-100),itselfanalready
boldly metaphorical argument that has traveled widely in Humanities
discourses (for an overview see the Winter 2007 number ofCritical
Inquiry). Even so, it constitutes in my view a form of misplaced
concreteness because the working of this metaphor depends on
attributing to cells a form of quasi-human agency—which, biologically,
they simply do not possess. Unless, of course, we are willing to
anthropomorphizecellbiology.
Even aside from the Derridian argument, the ascendancy of the
immunesystemprovidesacaptivating(becausesuggestive)tropewhich
is,despiteitscredentialsofscientific"objectivity,"notneutralculturally
and socially. Rather, by pointing to a possible conflict of interest
between human biology and human sociality—one geared towards
protection from deleterious outside influences, the other promoting
openness to such influences—the immune system in its social and
cultural uses lends credence to models of closure and occlusion. Such
troping, armed with the unquestionable authority of Mother Nature, has
clearly gained more plausibility during the past decades, as more and
(^12) Aside from Derrida and throughout human history, individuals and
collectivities—most oftenwithoutexplicit appealto biologicalstructures—have
imagined themselves and their interchanges with others in ways that seem
analogous with the immune system. One example is social systems theory,
especially its Luhmannian variant, where connectivities modeled on the
ecosystem are key factors in defining system/environment relations and
boundaries are theorized as impetus for the renegotiation and, ultimately,
stabilizationofagivensystem:"boundarymaintenanceissystemsmaintenance"
(Soc ial Systems17). At the same time, in a theoretical move relevant to the
present argument, Luhmann argues against the conventional hermetic
understandingofboundaries,sayingthat"aboundaryseparateselementsbutnot
necessarilyrelations"(SocialSystems29).