The Trouble with Balance. On immunology, politics and French literature in the 21st century
In the first decade of our century, democracy was given two diagnoses. They concluded that democracy was threatened by violent emotions, which it vitally needed at the same time. Jacques Ranciere’s La haine de la democratie (2005) and Stéphane Hessel’s Indignez-vous ! (2010) signaled the end of the short-lived peace between hormones. This peace, or state of homeostasis, followed a 20th century hormonal politics that knew two extremes – the politics of hate (Orwell) and the politics of pharmacological consent (Huxley, Lem). In the paper, I will briefly characterize the hormonal politics of late modernity, and I will discuss the work of several French writers (Jean Marie Gustave le Clezio, Virginie Despentes, Patric Deville, Michel Houllebecq) regarding their attitude toward 1968 as a moment of effort to change the social immune system.
Keywords: immunology, balance, imbalance, hormonal policies, immunitary democracy, communitarian democracy, foreign bodies