(Auto)immunity, Racism, and Crisis: From the Biopolitical to the Allopolitical

This article traces the intersection within biopolitical thought of immunity/autoimmunity and race/racism, bringing Foucault’s biopolitics to bear on the ongoing family separation crisis in the southern US, a result of the Trump administration’s policy of immigration deterrence. Through an understanding of this policy as one of autoimmune racism, I argue, it is possible to open the political to the radical to-come. The article therefore moves from the biopolitical, to what I term the allopolitical, an unknown politics of alterity that allows for the welcoming of political alternatives capable of bringing about a profound disruption of the racist, immunitary order.