International Relations and the “Great Immunological Transformation”: Adapting Thought and Practice to the Challenges of the Anthropocene

Jaroslav Weinfurter, M.A., M.Sc., Ph.D., and Ing. Lucia Kozák Csajková from the Department of International and Diplomatic Studies FIR VŠE have been awarded a grant from the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) for their research project “International Relations and the “Great Immunological Transformation”: Adapting Thought and Practice to the Challenges of the Anthropocene.”

The project seeks to reassess the position of the discipline of International Relations (IR) under the encroaching realities of the Anthropocene. It will show that the joint impacts of natural and man-made crises are best addressed by a post-phenomenological approach that would be capable of bringing nature, physical environments and atmospheres – often relegated by IR to mere background variables – to the forefront of IR theory. In this regard, the project makes use of the immunological and spherological theory of Peter Sloterdijk as a way of (1) exploring the contemporary practices of world-building and immunisation on both micro- and macro-scales; and (2) sketching out new possibilities for IR theory that have been opened up by the spatial, atmospheric and immunological dislocations of late modernity. This disciplinary reorientation will be shown to hold much promise for the invention of new forms of cohabitation, mutualism and co-immunism fit for the nascent era of the Anthropocene.