Abstract
This article explores immunity outside the contours of a human body and biopolitical framework in the plant science material-discursive object of the superweed with its resistance and tolerance to herbicides. Instead of categorically assuming all forms of immunity and immune systems taking place within the abstract category of the (human) body, the article attends to how the figure of the superweed as an analytical and synthesizing focal point comes to populate and be populated by the concept of immunity. At large, the author claims that the material dimension of the superweed can be seen as an extension or supplement to notions of the individual, autonomous, and bounded human body, yet this material dimension can also come to undermine even its own subject position. By unshackling or unlocking the concept of immunity from its human body ‘point of origin’, new ontological grounds for human and non-human political ecologies can be imagined, with a different form of embodiment, which is neither negative, nor affirmative.
Highlights
Ohad Ben Shimon is a writer, researcher, and educator with a background in cognitive sciences, psychology, cultural analysis, international business education, and art
Conclusion to conclude this article, I would like to return to the critical stakes of reading the superweed as a material-discursive object and what can be learned from such an analysis
Doing so allowed me to further explore the critical potential of the concept and its evolution beyond a dichotomic biopolitical framework, “provoking a politics that does not concentrate on the body as its only scale” (Murphy 2017, 143)
Summary
Ben Shimon, Ohad. 2021. “Eco-Immunology and Superweeds.” Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities 2, no. 1 (June): 23−31. https://doi.org/10.46863/ecocene.19. Research Article/ Received: 02.02.2021 /Accepted: 04.07.2021 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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