@article{mitochondrial-agency,
  author = {Layla Zbinden},
  title = {{Mitochondrial Agency: Towards a Host/Guest Theory of Co-Immunity}},
  journal = {Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science},
  year = {2023},
  volume = {11},
  number = {1},
  pages = {1--9},
  doi = {10.4245/spongen.v11i1.12925},
  abstract = {The ways we conceptualize the immune system and its relationship to the body impacts not only the ways we conceptualize illnesses, both acute and chronic, but the ways we treat said illnesses and the ways we understand the ontology of illness and disease. This essay surveys the anti-imperialist feminist discourse on immunology and medicine in relation to illnesses, immunity, liberal humanism, and posthumanism. I seek to offer a new model of the immune system stemming from Sandra Harding’s notion of “strong objectivity” and Jacque Derrida’s reflections on hospitality towards what I call a “host/guest theory of immunity.” I center the role of mitochondria in both immune responses, immune dysregulation, and autoimmunity and cancers, as well as the material inheritance and lineages of mitochondria to posit chronic illness in the bodies of women as collective phenomena passed through mitochondrial ancestry and stored in the bodily archive of the colonized body. Drawing on the fact that the existing models of immunity fail to capture the realities and ontologies of the generational and chronic illnesses of women of color, which I enter through the subject of Arab women, a new approach is necessary, one that stems from the realities and histories of sick bodies. I explore what can be gleaned from illness if we take seriously our grandmothers, mothers, and our mitochondria as agents of history, who exist long before we are even conceived, and what it could mean for us to be their guests.},
  keywords = {Arab feminism; autoimmunity; co-immunity; disability; feminist science studies},
  url = {https://spontaneousgenerations.com/articles/mitochondrial-agency/}
}