The Politics of Life in the Post-COVID-19 Era: An Intersectional Perspective on Immunity and Vulnerability Focusing on Healthcare and Public Health

This paper examines the COVID-19 pandemic through the lenses of immunity and vulnerability, delving into contemporary biopolitics and its social and political ramifications. The pandemic has not only been a public health crisis but has also exposed and intensified socio-political and economic inequalities, underlining vulnerabilities associated with neoliberal globalization and biomedicalization. Neoliberal policies have weakened public health systems and exacerbated health inequalities, resulting in an immune crisis that has accelerated the spread of COVID-19. Drawing on the theories of Roberto Esposito, Judith Butler, Henk ten Have, and Didier Fassin, this paper reinterprets the intersection of immunity and vulnerability, highlighting the negative biopolitics triggered by the crisis and exploring the potential for a shift toward affirmative biopolitics. By leveraging the interconstitutive approach of modern immunology, it proposes moving beyond traditional self-defense-based concepts of immunity towards a new direction for affirmative biopolitics. This new approach aims to foster social solidarity and community formation in the post-pandemic world, advocating for an inclusive and interdependent “politics of life” that acknowledges and embraces human vulnerability.