Sovereignty, Biopower, Immunity: Racialized Bodies in Robinson Crusoe

Abstract

This paper employs theories of biopolitics to examine the narrator’s rise to sovereign power and his exercise of biopower upon racialized bodies in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. I argue that race is a crucial factor that not only enables but further complicates Crusoe’s exertion of sovereign authority. Drawing upon the narrative’s conflicted division between, or occasional conflation of, zoe and bios, key terms through which Giorgio Agamben explicates conditions of human life, this paper seeks to create an intervention in existing scholarly discussions by examining the complex nature of Crusoe’s sovereign power and sovereign exception. By closely examining scenes where Crusoe interacts with cannibals and his slave/companion Friday, with a particular focus on the narrator’s initial reluctance in, and ultimate enforcement of, punishing cannibals for their barbarity, this paper explores configurations of race in Defoe’s early novel. The analysis mainly focuses on how different characters’ racial identities serve as impacting factors in Crusoe’s sovereign decision. Crusoe’s sovereign power becomes a hybridized version of governing, in which elements of absolute sovereignty and disciplinary training merge. Roberto Esposito’s logic of immunization anchors the reading of Crusoe’s incorporation of the racialized Other into his sovereignty, in which his initial desire to establish a protective boundary between himself and foreign, threatening elements becomes altered. I read Crusoe’s education of Friday as a process of dilution that takes place in advance of immunization via vaccination. Tracing the theoretical discussions of governmentality and sovereignty in biopolitical theory through Defoe’s early novel, this paper seeks to examine how race serves as a biopolitical factor in Crusoe’s attempt to establish his sovereign power on the island.