Derrida, autoimmunity, and critique

ABSTRACT This paper outlines and engages with Jacques Derrida’s notion of ‘autoimmunity’ to argue that it offers a unique resource for understanding the potential for critique inherent in and resultant from the COVID-19 pandemic. I first offer a brief genealogy of the terms ‘immunity/autoimmunity’ to show how they operate in biological, philosophical, and socio-political discourses, before outlining Derrida’s conception of the logic of autoimmunity, highlighting that it is not simply a negative phenomenon but a structural necessity of identity that opens up future possibilities. I then show how his logic of autoimmunity can be used to understand different dimensions of the coronavirus pandemic, including the possibilities for critique opened up therein. Crucially, such possibility arises not from a position external to the dominant logic or one that simply wishes to escape it, but because of the autoimmune structures internal to it. With this, I conclude that Derrida’s notion of autoimmunity points to an innovative way to understand social transformation from within the dynamics governing a dominant logic, all the while reminding and allowing us to think the resultant possibilities for new forms of critique and practices.