Derrida, Autoimmunity, and Islamic Medicine

Abstract

Autoimmunity often refers to a medical condition, yet it was used by Jacques Derrida to theorize the conflict between religion and science as well as Islam and the West. Derrida’s use of the term autoimmunity became widespread after he used it to diagnose the “American Organism” in the aftermath of the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001. Most commentary on Derrida’s political diagnosis have focused on his reading of Islam as an Other within the US body politic. This essay takes a different approach and reads Derrida’s diagnosis within the tradition of Islamic Medicine. If we are to truly rethink the othering of Islam as a viral autoimmune disease in the body politic of the US empire, we need to understand Islamic thought as forming the very basis of the West’s image of itself. I argue that Islam is far from a self-contained category opposing the West: a virus or a plague attacking it from the outside. Rather, Islam is the swallowed-within of the West itself, to which, the West continuously returns/reacts in an autoimmune fashion.