Skin to Skin

Abstract

AbstractThis article analyzes two Catalan novels, Albert Sánchez Piñol’s Victus: Barcelona 1714 (2012) and Martí Domínguez’s L’esperit del temps (2019), in light of the concept of immunity developed by the Italian theorist Roberto Esposito. It is argued that the two works share an affinity by demonstrating the material relevance of Esposito’s concepts, especially with reference to the skin as the basis for biopolitics. Victus links the rending of skin to textuality but simultaneously uses the breaking open of the body to highlight community as an assemblage of diverse material actors and agents. L’esperit del temps situates Nazi thanatopolitics at the intersection of biology and law, emphasizing how a politics of death relies on what kinds of matter, such as the phenotype of skin, are fetishized, pathologized, and subjected to human-centered techniques of power. Domínguez returns to the Second World War to comment on more contemporary concerns regarding bioethics and the increasingly mainstream presence of extremist politics in Europe. Opening the discussion with the reflections on skin of Donna Haraway and Jean-Luc Nancy, the article closes by engaging with Haraway’s work on companionship and the “illicit fusion” of beings, particularly in the historical period referred to as the “Chthulucene,” in which kinship and multispecies assemblages are viewed as tools for survival.