Biopolitics, Immunity, and Religion: A Brief Critical Reading of Roberto Esposito

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I advise you to re-read the text both to correct some typos (e.g. footnote 2 'diffenbt') and to double-check the translation (e.g. 'This proposal is directly inspired' and not 'direct'; 'human being' instead of 'human').

Moreover, when I write an article in English, I either quote the books in English, if translations are available, or I quote the original language versions, without translating them. This is what I advised you to do. Instead, you quoted the original versions by translating them yourself. It is up to the Editors to decide whether this is OK for their journal. 

Author Response

Thanks for the recommendations. I will make the suggested corrections.

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article addresses the role of religion in Roberto Esposito’s thought and in his reflection on immunity. It aims at suggesting that religion can play a different role  – a positive one – that the one outlined by Esposito, since it can be conceived as “exposure to otherness” (p. 13).  The text is clearly written and well structured. The cited references are relevant, but could be implemented by recent texts and articles on new debates on pandemic in which Esposito is involved (see, for instance, “Micromega», n. 8, 2020, Biopolitica: inganno o chiave di volta? ). Conclusion are consistent and clearly stated. P. 2, line 53: please change Michel de Foucault in Michel Foucault 

Author Response

Thanks for the recommendations. I will make the suggested corrections

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article " BIOPOLITICS, IMMUNITY AND RELIGION: A brief critical reading of Roberto Esposito" brings an interesting discussion to the author’s thesis about the immunity mechanism and the pollical-theological machine aligned with the Christian tradition. The article criticizes Esposito’s thesis about the political-theological machine, which sees the person as a component of the machine, and which, by reducing diversity to a binary opposition, presupposes the dissolution of one side into the other.   

Notwithstanding its analytical quality in the approach of themes such as the immunity paradigm and the theological-political machine, at some moments, the article presents a hasty analysis that only touches on important aspects of Esposito’s text in face of the “ternary” trinitarian theology. This results in the weaking the author’s main thesis.

Here are two of these moments, concerning the theological-political machine:

a)      The author limits Esposito’s political-theological discussion to the presentation of the political-theological machine. This limitation does not favor the article because Esposito presents this machinery as the operation instrument of the political theology that reduces the multiple and forces its absorption into the One. Also, it is a known fact that the political theology discussion proposed by Esposito includes the debate over the limited political form that springs or that spreads from this reductionism, or by analogy (Schmitt 2005), or by overlapping the theological form of understanding the One in relation to the plurality and diversity of the whole (Lefort 1995). The discussion about Esposito’s political theology is unarguably wider and deeper than its machinery and functioning.

 

b)     Detailing Esposito’s argument without presenting its supposed insufficiency in the light of the “trinitarian and pneumatological theological genealogy” prevents the reader from accepting the uthor’s thesis. That happens because not only does Esposito present the functioning of the political theology, but he demonstrates, in a wider sense, that there is no thinking about politics outside political theology. And that is because the Judaic-Christian inheritance of political theologies ultimately reduce the comprehension of plurality to the feature of the One, to the divine totality. Isn’t the statement “God is among us” bonding the experience of being to the presence of God?

Finally, if the article intends to develop a critical approach based on an alternative reading of “ternary” trinitarian theology, the author could focus on the thorough presentation of his/her thesis against Esposito’s. In that case, my suggestion would be the addition of more reasons to explain why the “trinitarian and pneumatological theological genealogy” can show an alternative through which it is possible to present the extreme plurality of the impersonal singular existence, without ultimately identifying diversity with some form of the One*. Esposito’s critic challenges theology to demonstrate how it is possible to conceive the ultimate plurality without conditioning the experience of diversity to the existence and the presence of the One.   

 

Best Regards,

Author Response

Thank you for the critical and even provocative reading. Without being able to explore in a more exhaustive way (it is just an article) the discussion about Esposito's political - and even impolitical - proposal, I agree that the discussion should focus on the proposal to overcome the reduction of plurality through absorption into the One (even if it is through a binary division), which Esposito considers to be the inevitable result of the theological-political machinery. I do not consider that the solution presented by Esposito - the way of impersonality, explored from the action of thought, according to a tendentious monist paradigm - is inappropriate, as it is a way that would eventually make it possible to think about the plurality of reality, particularly in its communitarian configuration (and even in politics). It is true that a monist solution may be debatable, in order to safeguard the plurality of reality. But I do not intend to deepen this discussion here. I only propose that a theological-political reading that explores ternary devices - such as the reference to the third without canceling its personalist configuration as Esposito does - and pneumatological devices (as the basis of a communicational understanding of reality) can allow an understanding of the political similar to that which Esposito proposes. In this case, to achieve the same purpose - and make the same legitimate criticism proposed by Esposito - it will not be necessary to completely abandon the scope of theological-political devices, nor to deviate into the realm of the impolitical and impersonal, as Esposito intends.

I will try to make this position clearer in the body of the article.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

A strong start: very rare in being even-handed, or simply philosophical enough to both admit there is serious opposition to the hegemonic position on lockdowns and to not decide immediately to demean it. That's largely by the by, though. The next section is largely expository, but good enough exposition, certainly for the purposes of the essay (though I want to mark that it's quick, and brief, and doesn't analyse much, and these days, along with something about the style of it, which isn't quite English but is close to being perfect, makes me think a machine could have written this - one has to be on one's guard, I suppose). This is section 2: I note that it doesn't seem to have a single quotation in it. This seems to be a feature of the whole thing: maybe this is why the analysis becomes a little bit, not too much, but a little superficial: if this were my student, I'd recommend more close reading. (But then perhaps the constraints of space are to blame: it does designate itself as a 'brief' critical reading...)

To some extent, section 3 suffers from the same deficits. Nothing is really wrong, but nothing is deeply probed into. It's more unclear in this section how much if any is Esposito's reading. And one did wonder here whether this connection between religion and immunity has not been the subject of a lot of literature before now. What I mean is, maybe this is just what happens when philosophy makes its way into another discipline: this kind of introductory work is needed. But if it's not, then I wonder if this has enough originality or analytical power to merit publication: it depends on the nature of the journal/issue it's intended to appear in, probably. As ever, nothing is wrong, but at the same time, nothing is analysed deeply enough to really risk that. It's a summary, and without citations, and hence without really supporting 'evidence', the reader is left to simply trust their judgement, which might be okay (and indeed, having read almost all of the texts concerned, I can testify that the reading is broadly correct), but I'm not sure journal articles should operate at that level. Not if they mean to be philosophical in any case.

The problem then is that the one moment in which originality is possible and is promised in the introduction is SEction 5, but this is designated as a conclusion. Really, the whole essay should spring from the seeds sown in the introduction and perhaps alluded to here, in conclusion. Now there is interesting material and there are significant possibilities for thought and theology contained in this conclusion, though I don't think they really take up in a serious way the material on immunity (that only emerges briefly on the very final lines); the only thing they really relate to is the material on the person and the thing/personal and impersonal; should the whole piece be developed rather as a critical reading (and it would have to be a close /reading/) of Esposito's 'Two' (which it was nice to see: it doesn't seem to be often read)? (and one would have to justify the way in which Esposito's text is led, which is to say onto a terrain in which it isn't really equipped, and doesn't intend, to defend itself, which is that of the theological debates the author refers to: in his work, it's theology insofar as it gets taken up into political conceptuality, not theology as such.

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Your comments are very relevant and interesting. Once they touch on very vast points in the development of the article, I am not able to respond directly to each part. I introduced some elements on the text, which I thought could help to clarify the position and, eventually,  to react to your important suggestions. I am aware that a more in-depth study would imply a much longer and more documented text.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The secondary literature on Esposito must be improved.

The final proposal of a ‘political pneumatology’ should be better argued.

Books for which a translation is available should be quoted from the English edition or left in the original edition.

Moreover, on page 8, the author wrote “Espinoza” instead of “Spinoza.”

The cited book Two: The Machine of Political Theology and the Place of Thought should be added to the final bibliography.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you very much for the importants recommendations. I have made some improvements.

I think I have quoted all the original editions of the books, although some of them are not in the author's language (like Patocka and Nancy).

I used only some secondary literature on Esposito about his political theology, not about his hole philosophy.