Not so long ago a there was a national panic based on the idea of "immigrants" creeping into the body politic. Walls had to be built to protect us against infection.
The coronavirus has no concept of national boundaries. It creeps into every space. It seeks real bodies to penetrate; real cells to devour.
Phantasmagoric dangers fade into oblivion.
RETURN TO THE BODY: return to reality.
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Nationalism relocates one's own body into a larger body—the body politic. "It is because territory is imagined in corporeal terms that the state seeks to secure its borders—its orifices and entry points—from infiltration and penetration" (Mark Neocleous).
Like a human body, nations are imagined to have boundaries—to defend against alien entities or cells seeking to contaminate the body politic. Immigrants are conceived as invaders—creeping through porous boundaries—threatening to destroy a vulnerable self.
Immigrants are experienced as if foreign bodies within one's own body, eliciting hysteria—a psychosomatic symptom—generating an immune response.
Boundaries must be firmed up—a wall erected to protect the vulnerable self: to defend against sexual assault; to eliminate the danger of parasitic entities attaching to the national body, draining its resources, consuming its substance. |
