Immunology in the ‘City Interior’: Questioning Resiliency in Everyday Life

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that our conception of resilience, as a manifestation of immunological reason, is equated to the city's neoliberal design, and that we need to refocus our attention on the 'city interior.'It is easier to conceptualize resilience in relation to something from the outside, yet perceived external threats such as terrorism, illegal migration, or environmental disasters, I argue, stem from overlooked immune practices, done by the city to immunize itself.What should be of greater focus thus is how the very paradigm of resilience is fractured in equating resiliency with a culture of consumption.In this paper, I work on Sloterdijk's immunological reason to project how our current understanding of immunity qua resilience is firstly highly neoliberal and pathological, and I next seek to highlight the 'city interior' to problematize our immunological reasoning.I do so by offering a cursory sensorial of the urban via three personal anecdotes to give a renewed sense of resilience.

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