Biocolonial and Racial Entanglements

Abstract

Through a reading of Neill Blomkamp’s 2009 science fiction/mock documentary District 9 and John le Carré’s novel The Constant Gardener, this article illustrates how the acceptance that we are all human has an identity-constituting function that enables bodies and lives to be valued differently with far-reaching implications for both biomedical experiments and experiments with the ethics of cohabitation. More specifically, this article examines biocolonial regimes, “imagined immunities,” and limited sympathies that transform racialized, class-mediated, and transnational vulnerable bodies into experimental labor or biomaterial (hearts, kidneys, and corneas) to be consumed or disposed of as part of life-sustaining and life-administering apparatuses.