Immune system as a political metaphor

“For example, arguing for an elite special force within the parameters of “low-intensity conflict” doctrine, a U.S. army officer wrote: “The most complex biological model we know - the body’s immune system. Within the body there exists a remarkably complex corps of internal bodyguards, In absolute numbers they are small - only about one percent of the body’s cells. Yet they consist of reconnaissance specialists, killers, reconstitution specialists, and communicators that can seek out invaders, sound the alarm, reproduce rapidly, and swarm to the attack to repel the enemy.”
Donna Haraway, "The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate Others," in Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1992,) 321

Installation "Tower of Babel"

According to the story, a united human race in the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar (שִׁנְעָר‎). While building a tower to the sky God went down to earth he was not satisfied that people use their energy to create the object of idolatry, and that they direct their actions vertically but not horizontally. Paradoxically, this unification did not seem healthy to humanity, they thought they were building what was “better than themselves,” forgetting that they are all they have. The God tangled their language, so they speak many different languages, so they do not understand each other. Also  it marks the time where human race were “scattered all over the face of the Earth”. The piece is questioning and trying to recreate or to create the new dialogue between the species (various notions, humans and non-humans), reflecting on the possibilities of a culture of cosmopolitan dialogue.



© 2022 Kamilė Krasauskaitė