from autopoiesis to autoimmunity in legal systems

8/12/2019 From Autopoiesis to Autoimmunity in Legal Systems

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From Autopoiesis to Autoimmunity in Legal Systems

Willis Santiago Guerra Filho1

The following paper aims to address the adequacy of Luhmanns systemic

approach to describe the legal order of so-called "peripheral" (democratic)

states under the present post-modern historical conditions, that leads to a

globalization of (post-industrial) society. In the background we may found the

major question about what kind of relationship has such an approach in

socio-legal studies to a critical one, especially that of so-called

poststructuralists such as Deleuzeand Derrida. We are to try to go beyond

those efforts although having them as requisites. In order to do so we begin

with a depiction of the legal order's general features in the society we live in

worldwide nowadays, as well as a sketch of the evolutionist theory of

autopoietic social systems, to end up with an appraisal of a paradigm shift

towards an immunological approach as it has being discussed in the

Humanities by authors like Roberto Esposi to and also by others from

different fields of research.

Key-words: World society autopoiesis poststructuralism critical socio-legal theory -

immunology

The theory of autopoietic social systems develops a conceptual

framework to be applied on the study of societies that attained a particular

historical condition, to which belongs at first place the democratic feature of

political institutions and the capitalistic domain of economic values in those

1

Professor at the Graduate Legal Studies Program of the Catholic Pontifical University atSo Paulo, Brazil. Research fields: Legal Theory, Philosophy of Human Rights, Social and

Political Theory.


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societies. This means, in Luhmann's own words, the forthcoming of a

gesellschaftlicher Primat der Wirtschaft viz. economic society instead of

"political society (societas civilis), so that "das politische Teilsystem der

Gesellschaft seine fhrende Stellung an die Wirtschaft abgibt, das heit sich

primr wirtschaftlichen Problemstellungen unterordnet" (Luhmann, 1981:

149). The process of globalization leads us to figure the whole world as a

society, the "world society" (Weltgesellschaft, Luhmann, 1971). Considering

this society as a system, we'll have also on this system a "core" (or "center")

and a "periphery". "Central" would be the (participative) democratic and

advanced capitalistic parts of the world society, while the others would remain

"peripheral" until the accomplishment of their integration in the "economic

world society" (wirtschaftliche Weltgesellschaft). Here we must remind that

"core" and "periphery" in terms of autopoietic systems' theory is not to be

seen as corresponding to criteria of geopolitical division of the world, so that,

for instance, Latin America as a whole would be at most a peripheral part of

the West, and so on. As Luhmann explains, modern (or, in my terms,

postmodern) society is the one and only world society, that is to say, a global

system, since "as a consequence of functional differentiation, only one

societal system can exist. Its communicative network spreads over the globe.

It includes all human (i.e. meaningful) communication" (1990c: 619). In the

global system some subsystems, as for instance the scientifical and

economical, already overcame territorial boundaries, while others still

attached to it, as it is clearly the case of political and legal systems. Although,

as there is a difference on the distribution of economic capital within any

given society, there is also such difference in the distribution of political

democratic and juridical values from the core to the whole society, be it in the

South or in the North part of the Globe. (See, for a similar view, Souza

Santos, 1988: 376; 1992: 138.) This is not to be comprehend in terms of

countries that are peripheral, since the center and its periphery would be


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physically everywhere, as long as its characteristics are shown. But if we

follow the indications of Luhmannin his final masterwork from 1997, when he

asserts that protests always come from the periphery against the center, by

pretending to be out of society, then we come to the conclusion that as the

society of society autopoietically unfolds itself so the distance between

desires and its satisfaction tends to vanishes, something that Kojves

lectures on Hegels Phenomenology of spirit would support, as there we

find the (Herderian) idea of geistigeTierreich (see Forster, 2009).

The theory of autopoietic social systems is an "evolutive acquisition" (N.

Luhmann& R. De Giorgi, 1991b: 221 ff.) of post-industrial society and it is

fashioned to describe its (virtual) reality. It substitutes the epistemological

opposition "subject X object" (= objekttheoretischer approach) by the

functional differentiation "system X environment" (= differenztheoretischer

approach), and regards as its object not the human being, but their exchange

of communication (Luhmann, 1987: 192 ff.), thus generating a conceptual

framework more adequate to the "informational" society of postmodern era.

This happens as far as the theory of autopoietic systems aims "to improve the

instruments of self-observation, i.e. of communicating within society about

society" (Luhmann, 1987: 137).

As a matter of fact, according to Luhmann(1990a, 1990b), there exists

a dependency between judicature and legislature, which is clearly seen in

such a rule as that in art. 97 of the German Constitution: "Judges are

independent and subject only to the rule of law". This means that they are

free from the political task of furnishing the general rules of conduct for a

given society, and cannot be politically responsible for their own decisions

that enforce those rules. On the other hand, they are free to operate with the

law, in so far as they use only legal arguments to solve the social problems

that are brought to their consideration. We are faced here with what

Luhmann calls "the paradox of coercion that becomes freedom", since


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judges are subjected to legislation but not to legislature, as far as every

statute enacted by legislators is subjected to the interpretation of judicial

officials - even rules like the one mentioned above in art. 97, of the German

Constitution, where "rule of law" (Gesetz) is understood as "law" in the most

broad sense (Recht) to include, for instance, constitutional rules and

principles. (See Hesse, 1984: 210, note 54.)

In this context the judicature turns out to be of central importance to the

efficiency of legal order in present societies with a democratic political

organization. To be recalled are the acute remarks made by L. M. Friedman

(1976) on the change of the role played by Courts in the industrial societies of

modern world, which became much less occupied with the settlement of

individual litigations, as with the solution of social problems. As a result we

observe the need for change in the role to be played by judicature in

comparison to other state powers. Judges can no longer be only "la bouche

de la loi", as they were referred in the classical doctrine of Montesquieu.

They must also become "la bouche du droit".

Legislation no longer furnishes the required guidelines to a satisfactory

judicial treatment of issues, such as those that we have to cope with in the

hyper-complex postmodern society, brought into light after the body of

statutes were enacted. (See Arnaud, 1992: 30, 2ndcol.) This will only lead to

an extreme degree of dependency upon judicial creativity in order to provide

solutions which are at the same time adequate and legitimate. And this

means also an emphasis on the importance of the procedural laws, that

regulate the judicial exercise of power.

In such a view, the indeterminacy viz. the subjectivity of judicial

decisions (since they can be grounded in many - and even opposite -

plausible ways), pointed out by D. Kennedy, doesn't brings about, as he

states, the "nonclosure in the legal system according to its own criteria"

(1985: 999). This would happen if we were representing an "alopoietic (= non-


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autopoietic) system". In an autopoietic legal system the result of a judicial

decision has always the nature of aprima facievalid statement of what is to

be considered "right", "lawful" (Recht) in the system, since the system itself is

the condition of this validity (Geltung). (See Luhmann, 1991a: 278.) Here we

may also remind the observation made by Trubek(1990: 43), that "[t]he more

that post-modernist ideas advance within legal culture, the more we begin to

see law not as a set of determinate commands, or even as contraditory-yet-

structured sets of rules, principles, and visions, but rather as a series of

fragments which are deployed though a wide range localized process or

practices". Those processes can be seen as media to the circulation of legal

communication in the legal system.

These circumstances make of judicature the unit of the legal system

that by definition operates recursively (i.e., in a feedback and self-

referentiated relationship) only with elements of this system, what makes of it

a "functional differentiated" system. Although there are elements to be found

in the environment that also belong to other systems - of morals, economics,

politics, etc. -, as long as they are used by judicature to justify decisions, by a

sort of "Midas touch" they are converted into elements of the legal system:

the system is closed with, not to the environment. "Nur in der Welt ist das

System ein operativ geschlossenes System" (Luhmann, 1991: 305,

emphasis as in the original). A. Goldsmith (1993: 257) sees much in

common in Luhmann/Teubner's conception with Stanley Fish's basic thesis

of "permeable autonomy of law".

That is why it is postulated that judicature occupies the core of legal

systems and because of that it is autonomous, or "self-produced" (=

autopoieticMaturana& Varela, 1973) systems, while legislature, together

with other units, are peripheral. On the political system, conversely,

legislature occupies the core, while judicature appears on the periphery. Here

is of interest to refer a study by Mario Bunge(1990: 219), where he asserts


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that (a) peripheral in a system is what occurs in its boundary; (b) a

specific function of the system's boundary is to carry out the system-

environment exchanges; (c) in the boundary one finds the system

components that are directly coupled to environmental items.

W. H. Clune (1989) also uses the image "core" and "periphery" in his

construction of a (topological) "Basic Model of Legal Thought". At the

dimension of decision making agencies, processes and decisions he also

puts the courts in the core and legislature in the periphery (ib.: 190 et seq.).

Also Boaventura de Souza Santos(1988) uses the distinction in his attempt

to design a "cartographie symbolique du droit".

The assumption of the legal system as an autonomous - in the sense of

autopoietic, self-referential (see Varela, 1975: 20, 1st.col.,principio, et seq.,

2nd.col., in fine) - social system doesn't mean to advocate its isolation from

the others social systems of morals, religion, economics, science, politics

etc., that are functionally differentiated from one another in present complex

societies. (See, v.g., W. Kargl, 1991, and for a different, misleading view A.-J.

Arnaud, 1989, 1991, and J, Bjarup, 1992: 328.) By autonomy is not meant

"autarchy". This autonomy means only that the legal system functions with its

own (binary) code, that is to say, in the determination of what is legal viz. right

(Recht) or illegal viz. wrong (Unrecht) there is no need to import criteria from

other systems, although they are connected with the legal system by means

of procedures of many sorts - legislative, administrative, contractual and,

specially, judicial -, which are essential to the system's operations of juridical

self-reproduction (= "operational closedness", operative Geschlossenheit). As

G. Teubner (1987: 20) exemplary formulates, "[t]he more the legal systems

specializes in its function of creating expectations by conflicting regulation,

the more it develops and refines norms and procedures, which can be used

for future oriented behavior control. This can only be formulated in the

following paradoxical terms: Law, by being posited as autonomous in its


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function - formality - becomes increasingly dependent on the demands for

performance from its social environment - materiality". (Emphasis as in the

original) Proceduralization to my view represents the way out of the aporetical

conflict between the modern feature of formality and the pre-modern

materiality of law in postmodernity. (See for a dissent understanding

Blankenburg, 1984, and the reply of Teubner, ib.)

The autonomy of the system is condition of possibility of its connection

with other systems, that is to say, of its "openness" (Offenheit). (See

Luhmann, 1987: 603 ff.; Neves, 1992: 36 et seq.)

In the maintenance of the legal system's autonomy the judiciary is

above all supported by a "cognizing unit", which is the legal doctrine. Perhaps

because aware of this state-of-affairs is that E. L. Rubin(1988) advances his

thesis of the "unity of discourse" between judicature and legal scholarship.

That unit (and the mentioned unity as well) is absolutely necessary to

the autopoiesis of social systems, since it is responsible for its self-

observation (that is, for instance, what makes social systems differ from

biological or chemical systems - Luhmann, 1987: 64) and for the recognition

of the elements that are from this specific system - and not from another one,

placed in its environment (see Luhmann, 1987: 60 ss.): "Auch die

Beschreibung des Rechts mu noch rechtliche brauchbar sein" (Id., 1988:

13). Critical theories appear to this view as an advanced moment in this

process of the system's reflexive self-observation, thus contributing to its

operational closure. (See Id., 1991: 277.) The as same it happens with

jusnaturalistic and axiological theories, they do not have to be rejected by

(autopoietical) systems theory, but rather included in its more comprehensive

theoretical framework. (See Id., 1988: 15 et seq.) Here we must remind that

the conception of "society as a system" is considered by Trubek(1990: 5) as

"a major advance in legal thought" brought to North-America by the

law and society movement, what makes it congenial also to the critical


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tradition.

Legal theory not only improves the interpretative apparatus used by

judicature, but it also furnishes interpretations that can possibly be adopted

by judges, and by doing that helps them to fulfill their fundamental task of

defining the conflicts and solutions that are to be seen in accord to the law, by

modeling a specific juridical perception of social reality. "These perceptions

differ significantly from our day-to-day understanding of these phenomena as

well as from sociological or economic theories. The legal system develops

certain specific social constructions of reality (Berger and Luckmann) in

order to decide social conflicts under the guidance of legal norms. In creating

its own reality from the perspective imposed by the exigencies of conflict

resolution, the legal system abstracts highly selective models of the world,

thereby neglecting many politically, economically, and socially relevant

elements" (Teubner, 1983: 279).

The conception of legal order as an autopoietic system doesn't fit to the

reality of (semi-)peripheral modern or (peripheral) traditional sectors of

societies and/or social groups, (so, e.g., Adeodato, 1991: 112) and that

mostly because of their low level of social integration (Neves, 1992: 155 ss.,

210). Luhmann is aware of this circumstance, as he shows when he states

that since (post)modern (world) society "depends more on self-regulative

processes than any other previous society (...) it cannot afford a high degree

of social integration" (1982: 133). But as long as a legal order is not only a

reality, a Sein, but it also builds an ideality, a Sollen, the theory of autopoietic

legal systems furnishes an important knowledge about the possibilities of law

in peripheral parts of the (postmodern) world society, that is to say, about how

it could - and should not - be. This may lead to a critical (= normative) use of

this kind of (descriptive and constructivist) socio-legal study. An example

might be seen in the work of Marcelo Neves(1992: 182 ss.,passim), when

he identifies the lack of legitimization in Brazilian Constitutional Law to


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problems in its "self-reflection" and self-reproduction as an autopoietic legal

system.

If, according to C. Geertz (1983: 173), "as any other trade, science,

cult, or art, law, which is a bit of all these, propounds the world in which its

descriptions make sense", so that it is "a distinctive manner of imaging the

real", then the theory of autopoietic legal systems is a way of imaging this

"manner of imaging the real". Its universalistic viz. "holistic" (in the sense of

"non-redutionistic") nature can easily induce us to consider it as a sort of

"Grand Theory" or, using R. M. Unger's terms (1987: 37 et seq.), a "deep-

structure theory", when my point is that we would do better using it as a

"proto-theory", i.e., "a body of ideas that can serve as point of departure to

different views of social reality and possibility" ( id. ib.: 528). Such a

sociological theory of law represents an attempt to escape the present

"exhaustion of paradigm" (Abel, 1980: 826) in this field - and, at least, it does

open it to an interdisciplinary dialogue without precedent and as we see, in

the world society in which we live in nowadays, with its hyper complexity and

multicentrality, as it is described by autopoietical systems social theory, there

is a need to investigate the present differentiation of systems in such a

society, that might be fulfilled by the systemic approach addressed here.

Nowadays, the lack of trust in false pretensions that claims to possess a

privileged access to reality and the (only) right solution to the complex

questions we are dealing with is what requires the assumption of an

"epistemological democratic" standpoint. This means that we have to promote

a wide debate to include the greatest number of positions, so that without an

excluding ideological bias we can gather the correct aspects from each one in

order to build appropriate answers to our questions. What is meant here is

not the "end of ideology", but, on the contrary, the assumption of a new type

of ideology, that is a (self-) consciously assumed ideology, opened to include

assumptions of other ideologies and credos, even those strictly religious,


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and J. Habermas.

What I wish to stress here is the fact that in postmodern society there is

a plurality of equally valid descriptions of it - and prescriptions based on them

-, which to a certain degree can be combined to give a more adequate -

because more comprehensive - solution to social problems. (In this sense,

Luhmann, 1991: 44, 55 et seq., in spite of the fact that he advocates, like

Habermas, the continuity - and accomplishment to the latter - of modernity

nowadays and prefers to call "middle modernity" what I consider as the last

phase of it.)

If we now focus on one of those systems, namely the legal one, it is

possible to observe through the lenses of luhmanniansystems theory that it

is at the same time separated and articulated with others social (sub)systems,

so that mutual irritations are absorbed through the so called structural

coupling between the center and periphery of one another, in order to

maintain their stability and simultaneously growth in their environment,

autonomously. Legal systems and political systems are connected through a

particular media of operative closeness called the legal constitution of the

State. Constitutional Supreme Courts emerge from the very core of legal

systems and thus belong to the center of this system, but we may very well

postulate that they are passing through a sort of migration to its periphery

with a strong tendency to occupy the center of political systems. These courts

become co-responsible with the operation of the binary code of both systems,

that is to say, the lawful or non-lawful code in the case of legal system and

the government or opposition in the case of political system. This is due to the

centrality of the definitions about constitutionality of legal norms both to legal

and political systems. So we are now to face the question of the risks that

such a development might bring about, as Luhmann(1997) make us aware

referring to Dieter Grimm (1991)s book on the future of Constitutions. (Now

see also Grimm, 2013) At stake is the maintenance of the autopoiesis in the


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global system, if we consider the legal system as Luhmann (1993) once

proposed, that is to say, as a kind of immunity system in society, with the task

to vaccinate it against the diseases of conflicts through the legal depiction of

such conflicts as prescriptions to be followed by courts conceived as immune

against politics. And the main risk here appears to be that of auto-immunity, in

the sense brought to light by Derrida - first at an interview on drugs and then

extensively in works like Traces - and after him by scholars like Martin

Hgglund (2008), Nass (2006, 2012), Andrew Johnson(2010) andProtevi

(2001).

Such an approach forces the shift from a logic of opposition, inside

versus outside, to a differential logic of potencies that posits overlapping and

opposed systems. Proteviexplains the importance of such a shift:

The immunological systems task is one of reading, of espionageand counter-espionage. The endgame of auto-immune disease -especially when it targets the immune system itself - is that of theimpossible task of undoing the mistakes committed by the internal

police who confuse internal police for foreign agentsmasquerading as internal police dedicated to tracking downforeign agents masquerading as internal police (.) Forimmunology, the question is never one of inside and outside, butof the economic distribution between intakes, assimilation orrejection and excretion. The unitary, self-present body is explodedinto a systemic interchange, a point of exchange of forces; inother words, immunology studies forceful bodies politic. Theoutside is already inside, in relation to the inside; the regulation of

this interchange is the job of the immune system (2001, p. 102).

Auto-immunity is an aporia: the very thing that aims to protect us is the

thing that destroys us. The paradox of legal autopoiesis ending up in auto-

immunity reveals the unavoidable circularity of Law and its political roots at

the constitutions. A constitution is a legal statute of definitions. A constitution

as a set of laws creates a structural vocabulary and thereby constitutes its

own logical language game. What is against the constitutions is, by definition,


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illegal. The use of logic, as a mobilization of divergent immune-strategies, is a

power-mechanism intending to protect itself a priori. Politics is but one

specific structure of language. Politics furnishes the structure of the legal

systems binary logic of lawful/unlawful. Derrida believes that the concept of

auto-immunity upsets this traditional and prevalent misuse of definitions, and

can open up the possibility of a new type of political thought. It is only by

opening itself up to the other, threatening to destroy itself, that the organism

has the chance to receive the other and become another one, in order to

remain the same, i.e., alive. This explains the solution he proposes under the

name of hospitality, the quality of the host, which is gramatologically at the

same time similar and antithetical to hostage and hostility, a circumstance

referred also by Lyotard in his political writings, when he figures a secret

host as that to which each singularity is hostage. This is due to the troubling

analogy in their common origin: hostis. Hospitality carries within it the danger

of hostility, but likewise all hostility it retains a chance of hospitality. If

hospitality carries within it its own contradiction, hostility, it is unable to protect

itself from itself and is stricken with an auto-immune propensity for self-

destruction.

In a text from 1996, Derrida (2002) describes the way in which both

religion and science (faith and knowledge according to the title of the text) in

their traditional forms rely on the notion of an absolute instance that would

remain immune in the sense of unscathed, untouched by otherness, and

invulnerable to ingression: in other words, an instance of the purest

sovereignty, as it is convincingly shown by M. Lewis (2014) in a forthcoming

essay, which I summarize here.

Derridas text is concerned to demonstrate the impossibility of such an

immune instance due to the very logic of immunity itself, according to which it

is always possible for immunity to turn back on itself to become autoimmunity.

In this way, the supposedly complete totality attacks and breaches its own


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totality. From the very start, deconstruction was concerned to show that

anything which presents itself as a totality cannot do so without referring to

some other thing from which it distinguishes itself. The necessity of such a

recourse inevitably contaminates the pure autochthony and autarchy of any

totality. The reference of the same finite totality to the other is a

necessary relation. And this other in turn must refer to another other in order

to constitute its own identity. And this process of referring will go on to infinity.

Thus the identity of the same can never entirely be stabilized, determined

once and for all. This means that the reference to the other lays one open to

a loss of identity, an identity that one will never in truth have had. The novelty

here is to be found in its describing this self-undermining or self-

deconstruction of an only putatively absolute instance in terms of immunity

and its autoimmune recoil.

Lewiscites three passages from this text in order to demonstrate that

Derridabegins by speaking of the notion of immunity in the context of faith

and knowledge, before showing how the same notion functions in the

contexts of politics, law, Christianity, and biology. He then goes on to suggest

that, if one takes ones mark from the biological context, the notion can be

generalized without limit to all identities.

Here are Derridas words, which introduce the idea of the impossibility

of absolute immunity in the case of religion:

The same movement that renders indissociable religion and tele-

technoscientific reason in its most critical aspect reacts inevitably to

itself. It secretes its own antidote but also its own power of auto-

immunity. We are here in a space where all self-protection of the

unscathed, of the safe and sound, of the sacred (heilig, holy) must

protect itself against its own protection, its own police, its own power of

rejection, in short against its own, which is to say, against its own


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immunity. It is this terrifying but fatal logic of the auto-immunity of the

unscathed that will always have associated science and religion.

(Derrida 2002 [1996], 79-80)

These lines may be taken to describe the starting point of Roberto

Espositos project, and indeed the latter cites this passage in (2011, pp. 52-

53). In this connection, one should also among with Lewisnote thatDerrida

here inserts a footnote on thepolitical relevance of the notion of immunity,

and he associates immunity with community on exactly the same

(etymological) grounds as Esposito: The immune (immunis) is freed or

exempted from the charges, the service, the taxes, the obligations (munus,

root of the common of community) (Derrida 2002 [1996], 80n27). Derrida

gives a succinct account of this part of Faith and Knowledge in Rogues:

The formalization of this autoimmune law was there carried out around the

community as auto-co-immunity (the common of community having in

common the same duty or charge [munus] as the immune), as well as the

auto-co-immunity of humanity (2005 [2003], 35).

Derridagoes on to speak of the way in which this idea of immunity is

then transplanted into the domains of law (diplomatic immunity, for instance)

and Christianity (the legal inviolability of the space of the temple), before

moving on to the example which is most crucial to us, a chronologically later

use of the term immunity in the context of biological life. Here Derrida

ventures an extremely helpful and clear definition of auto-immunity. In this

passage, we should heed the way in which the reference to biological

immunity in particular seems to authorizeDerrida in asserting the generality

of autoimmunity:

It is especially in the domain of biology that the lexical resources of

immunity have developed their authority. The immunitary reaction


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protects the indemnity of the body proper in producing antibodies

against foreign antigens. As for the process of auto-immunization, which

interests us particularly here, it consists for a living organism, as is well

known and in short, of protecting itself against its self-protection by

destroying its own immune system. As the phenomenon of these

antibodies is extended to a broader zone of pathology and as one

resorts increasingly to the positive virtues of immuno-depressants

destined to limit the mechanisms of rejection and to facilitate the

tolerance of certain organ transplants, we feel ourselves authorized to

speak of a sort of general logic of auto-immunization. (ibid., emphases

added)

Hgglundlargely focuses his analysis around this generalization (2008,

15), which he refers to Rogues, while nevertheless excising it from its

particular context, where Derrida locates the explanation for the crisis of

scientific reason which reason itself produces, according to Husserls

account in the very structure of the present and of life, in the

temporalization of what Husserlcalls the Living Present (2005 [2003], 127)

(Hgglund2008, 15).

It is crucial to note the way in which Derridashifts from a negative to a

positive version of autoimmunity: auto-immunity makes it possible for the

integrity of the organism to be destroyed, it can precipitate the end of life, but

it also opens up the possibility of prosthetic grafts, transplants, and implants,

which can prolong life. The intruder to which one is hospitable may turn out

to be an enemy or a friend. It is this duplicity in value that Derrida uses to

authorize his generalization of the logic of autoimmunity. It is this absolute

neutrality between positive and negative outcomes that Hgglund has

attempted to prove. The ultimate adequacy of such an account and in

particular whether there is not a preference in Derrida, or indeed an ethical


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imperative that impels us towards this openness, cannot be assessed here.

Hgglund staunchly maintains that there is not, and this is one of Naas

reservations about his work, along with a number of other commentators (cf.

Naas2012, 365n14).

In Autoimmunity, six years later, in 2001, called upon to discuss the

attacks of September the eleventh, Derrida recalls and redeploys this logic in

the context of democracy and the anti-democratic threat to democracy which

appears to come from outside but which is in fact an intrinsic consequence of

democracy itself (in this context, American democracy).

Democracy will perhaps end up becoming the example of autoimmunity

that Derridaprivileges, even more than the biological, and indeed we might

surmise that while it was the double (positive and negative) connotations of

the biological sense of immunity that allowed him to generalize the notion,

one of the most important results of this will have been that it allows him to

understand the concept of democracy. Before himself quoting the passage we

have cited on the autoimmunity of the unscathed (2002 [1996], 79-80),

Derridacomments on his earlier text as follows: I there proposed to extend

to life in general the figure of an autoimmunity whose meaning or origin first

seemed to be limited to so-called natural life or to life pure and simple, to

what is believed to be the purely zoological, biological, or genetic (2003

[2001], 187n7).

Reflecting the context into which this passage has been transplanted, in

his later quotation Derridaunderscores the word terrifying and goes on to

suggest that, according to the logic of auto-immunity, the greatest threat of

terror comes from within, in that destruction of the immune system which

allows the relatively strict border between ones self and the outside and

hence ones very identity to collapse, not because of an enemy attack from

the outside, but due to an internal corruption. My vulnerability is thus, by

definition and by structure, by situation, without limit. Whence the terror.


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Terror is always, or always becomes, at least in part, interior. And terrorism

always has something domestic, if not national, about it. [...] [T]he enemy is

also always lodged on the inside of the system it violates and terrorizes

(2003 [2001], 188n7).

We are confronted here with the truth exposed in Walter Benjamins

1922 essay Kritik der Gewalt, where Kritik means both critique and

foundation as well as Gewalt means both violence and state Power. There

he argues, as Nietzsche did before him in his polemical tract On the

genealogy of morals (Second Essay, Section 17), that law cannot establish

itself without an original act of violence and cannot maintain itself and

preserve social order without continual violence. Law is intended to protect

citizens from violence, but its inherent structure implies that it must both

founds and maintain its authority with violence. Violence is much like a cancer

or an auto-immune disease of AIDS type, secretly implicit within the concept

of Law (Roberto Esposito, 2011). In Luhmanns terms, the original

distinction of law from violence results in negation, but the negated is not

cancelled: negation, maintaining what is not indicated as actualizable for the

next selection, is the operator of potentialization in every selection of social

systems. As a result it becomes clearer that the relationship of violence to law

is auto-immune. Law cannot define itself in opposition to violence, because it

is entirely reliant upon it. The foundations of Law and State are exhibit in this

auto-immune reversal. Luhmanns most peculiar understanding of negation

is what opens to the co-origin of actuality and possibility as well as that of

Law and violence: actual Law is potential violent.

Carl Schmitt would then in a Hobbesian mood advocate, in a book

that Benjaminhighly praised, that to protect and to preserve the law requires

a sovereign, which preserves the privilege to break it (supposedly) if it is

needed. If we recall that the etymology of immunity comes from the Latin

immunis, which literally means exempt, then to properly immunize the law


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there must be no border, no limit, no exemption, that with the law cannot, by

definition, be surpass. So violence is laws parasite, that is to say, if

communication can be seen as the mutual effort of excluding the unwanted

third, there is a noise or paradox that has to be overcome in order to produce

meaning, as Luhmann puts it in his opus magnum from 1997 quoting

Deleuzes Logique du sens, and if this is the parasite, then it is right to see

it as the operator that re-opens communication by interrupting the flow of

information upstream and discharges it downstream in a distorted and less

well defined form (in the proposal of Michel Serres). To become immune

against this parasite turns out to be lethal for societal systems, since they are

defined in Luhmanns terms precisely as communicational systems. The

killing of the parasite is likely to become a sort of Gods and mans second

death after resurrection, since in his polemical talk delivered at a conference

in Frankfurt to discuss the local Schools critical heritage (I See Something

You Dont See) Luhmann nominates Serres parasite to substitute the

subject of the observers observations. As we can conclude with Badiou

(and Kojve, as Pluth, 2009, convincingly demonstrates), man with his

access to ideas as those of justice and truth is the parasite of eternity that

was inoculated in the mortal animals humans live in, and this in the

anthropogenic act of man self-creation upon the material support of the

animal homo sapiens, as it is suggested by Kojve in his book on

phenomenology of right (see 34). It must have been in this sense that

Kojve wrote that man is a fatal disease of the animal (see Agamben,

2003), for in his reading of Hegel he plainly suggests that self-consciousness

is some kind of malady.

And as matter of fact, the legal system and its closer counterpart, the

political one, are very far from getting stronger in the society of society, as

Luhmann ends up treating present world society. We face here both the

limits and the critical potency of the idea of law as an autopoietic social


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demonstration of sovereign or disciplinary power. Such a possibility is

directed connected to a positive valuation of immunity as a condition not only

of hostile closure to avoid mortal diseases or menaces but also as a drive to

become open in order to hospitably include the amount of the other outside

that is needed not only to resist against it, while it is an agent of

differentiation, complexification and growth of life powers.

Otherwise we will end up reaching the point where everyone is, de

facto, an enemy of the state, at least in the light of such rules as the U.S.

National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD - it is remarkable the

coincidence with the Nazi-Partei`s acronym) 51 from May, 2007? Are we not

all policed? Since we can be attacked by internal enemies, everyone is a

potential and imminently actual Enemy.

Schmitt (1996, 2007) asserts that this is properly a depoliticalization,

since for him the essence of politics lies in the distinction of the friends from

the enemies. On the contrary, for Derrida partisan politics, the enemy within,

is, in reality, our current saturation in overpoliticalization. The partisan conflict

is the true essence of the auto-immune symptom of an ongoing world civil

war. Derrida, indeed, wants, acknowledges and demands a depoliticalization.

Is it another name for the deconstruction as it is for Lyotards (1979, 1988)

post modernity or a sign of democratic withdrawal as suggested by S. iek

(2003), especially in this age of overpoliticalization? More so, he advertises a

new concept of politics, a non-political concept of politics, altogether; he

demands a new concept of democracy. This is of course, a democracy to

come, within a politics to come, through a friendship to come. Is it

possible? Derridas answer: perhaps. In his well-known formula, it is only

possible as im-possible. Its impossibility is the condition of its possibility.

Luhmannwould not deny such a com-possibility in the human world that he

conceives under the conditions of double contingency. From my point of view

we could say with Leibnizand Kantthat, if it is necessary, it must be (made)


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possible.

For now we can only assert that Politics is no longer able to maintain

through enforcement of a legal order the irreducible opposition between what

is internal and external to it as a system, which under such condition tends to

de-differentiate, disintegrating in the environment. The increase of human

rights disrespect in traditional states of law is very symptomatically. And they

are negate without any tangible compensation, not even an illusion of

(security from) the contact with the environment. Would the world society

resist to such a collapse of both its legal and the political systems into one

another? And if it does, would it one day becomes a better place to live in or

even worse as it already is now? Are we facing the dissolution of national

states by their melting down into a global empire? Is it Schmitts

katechon(J. Hell, 2009), the most powerful enemy, the adversary par

excellence, that is the Antichrist, holding back the perpetual peace of the

impossible universal State to come (at least, for Schmitt, in The concept of

the political)?Will the increase of violence surpass the State, the Law and

the moral humans it has shaped (in Nietzsches terms)? And again, would

such a development bring about the overcoming of mankind or the return of

the inhuman? We definitely need to learn how to think in terms of flip/flop

distinction. And people like Drucilla Cornell (1992b: 68 ff.), Peter Sloterdijk

(2009), William Rasch (2000), Urs Stheli (2010) and Andreas

Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (2009) were definitely right, when they

established connections between Luhmannand Derrida, against the will of a

(Post-luhmannian) Teubner (1982, 2001, 2006), for Luhmann (2002a)

himself made deconstruction equivalent to (his) second order observing,

finally considering it the most pertinent description of the self-description of

modern society - as postmodern or, to respect his option,

postcatastrophical (catastrophe here understood in the sense meant by

Ren Thom, 1975).


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So we have to face a shift not only inside the paradigm but of the very

form that stabilizes state-of-affairs and imposes meaning to events, after its

fragmentary explosion, that results in the loss of the one-and-the-same world

to which we dedicate what Husserl (1931)called in section 104 of his Ideas

the primary belief (Urglaube) or Protodoxa (Urdoxa) in his attempt to

express the intentional back-reference of all modalities of belief. This makes

us recall what Luhmann in his earlier book on legal sociology refers as the

material dimension of social expectations, which Andreas Philippopoulos-

Mihalopoulos explains as the acknowledgement of the necessary

community of the world in order for expectations to exist, that appears in the

form of the need for a fictional consensus on which the reciprocal

confirmation and limitation of expectations is exercised. It is comprehensible

then the alert Luhmann (2002b) give to all those who think universal like

Frankfurtiansstill do, by telling them something they dont see, namely that

they miss the point, as long as they assume that they live in one and the

same world and that it is a matter of reporting in accord about this world.

Lately, Evan Thompson(2007) discusses under a Husserlianpoint of view

such a necessity that to different consciousnesses corresponds different

worlds.

We turn out thinking that the instantaneous and catastrophic destruction

of the World Trade Centers not only one but two towers, that is to say, of both

the real and its simulational clone might have caused such an enduring

impact due to the materialization it made of our lost confidence in a unreliable

reality, since it as mutable as a virus. Then we must mourn the consensual

parasite and welcome the virotic diremption (Entzweiung) of rhizomatic

mutualism (Deleuze & Guattari) producing the differend (Lyotard), an unity

that is multiple in itself, since it is (autopoieticaly) created in between

antagonic poles. Here it is useful to recall, with M. Zahani(2000), when in an

interview with Didier Eribon, Deleuze, referring to A Thousand Plateaus,


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pointed out that what he and Guattari (2004) call a rhizome is also one

example of an open system). And as we learn from a recent breeding of

Luhmanns and Baudrillards contributions to social thinking, [T]he

persistence of a two-side-form can be assured only by producing doses of

some simulated other, no longer available in its natural form (Ren

Capovin, 2008). If it is so, let us hope for the coming in the societal world

system of an AIDS-like virus, a virus that really aids finishing the social anti-

human and natures love/hate double-bind (Bateson, 1972, pp. 271 ss.),, by

doing the auto-immune apocatastasis. Apocatastasis is a term created by

Origenes of Alexandria (185-253 B.C.), also known as OrigenesCristian, in

order to name the final restoration of all things in its absolute unity with God.

It represents the redemption and final salvation of all beings including those

which are in hell. It is an event after the apocalypse itself. The apocatastasis

would synthesis the power of the embodied Logos or Verb, that is to say, of

Christ himself as a redeeming and salvation power, which recognizes no

limits. This proposal lead to the supposition that there is not only one created

world, the one that initiates in the Genesis and ends in the Apocalypse, as it

is suggested by the Christian Bible. On the contrary, in His creative activity

God generates an infinity succession of worlds, which will stop only in the

apocatastasis, when all beings will rest in God. This idea of an infinity

succession of worlds resembles what is predicated by a now very much

accepted hypothesis in quantum physics to be found in Hugh Everett IIIs at

the time it appears extremely controvert 1956 PhD thesis on the wave

function.

Otherwise the legal systems worldwide will increasingly react against

diversity and by doing so it undermines the very foundations of humanity's

both natural and cultural ambiance. This is the worst that the present

enduring crisis can lead to.

On the basis of this model, these metaphors that I produced here, and
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Or%C3%ADgenes_de_Alexandriahttp://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Or%C3%ADgenes_de_Alexandria


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from which, for example, I would say Europe is suffering from an allergy. Is

undergoing an allergic reaction, the crisis is allergic, which does not mean

that it cannot be serious! There are very serious allergies; I suffer from an

allergy, for example. How did I contract my allergy? Excessive protection in

childhood, excessive closure to the environment and then, as a result of

being exposed to the environment, may cause such disturbs as hay fever and

some other much worse of the kind. So we might think that Europe has an

obsession with Europe, which needs to be overcome as well. In other words,

above all, Europe needs to open up again. All this concentration of an

integration that is coming at the expense of the open stance that countries

like Portugal and Spain has previously had, even putting themself, why not,

somewhat outside of Europe, as they were until relatively recently, at the

times I myself had the chance to hear on those countries people saying they

were to go to Europe. In other words, there's no longer any doubt that if you

are in Portugal or Spain, you are in Europe. But why is it that the Iberic Lands

cannot recover its transatlantic vocation, its overseas calling, its ability to

integrate more deeply into the world system, which their history widely

demonstrates. What is happening is a problem of integration of the Euro

zone, of Europe, to global society, this global society whose origins lie in

Europe itself. With this sense of closure in on itself, this preoccupation with

itself, it is missing opportunities that it can no longer see, as a kind of blind

spot. The same is happening with other countries with such grand cultural

backgrounds like Greece, which is the very source of western civilisations

and nowadays are going through what we got to see. With the cultural capital

that it has, we in Brazil needing it so much, we are a great power now; it's a

joke from my point of view, with all due respect to my countrymen and others

that believe so. It is true that we are having some success there, but our

cultural deficit is very large while the culture surplus of Greece is much larger,

i.e., there is no strictly European solution for the European problem. Because


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this is the problem, Europe's obsession with itself, when there is no European

immune system, but instead there is a global immune system causing a kind

of allergy in the European sector of this world, which will be overcome above

all if it is recognised as such, this problem of aversion to what is external and

obsession with what is internal.

The immunological turn in the autopoietic paradigm, aware of such

circumstances, intends to emphasize rather the po(i)etical aspect than the

auto, the selfness, which is the possessive individualism that stills possess

us. Let us now extend some more such a proposal. This new interpretation

situates immunity in a nonexcluding relation with its common (or communal)

opposite. The essential point of departure [...] is a conception of individual

identity that is distinctly different from the closed monolithic one (Esposito

2011, p. 17).

Espositolinks this advance in interpretation to the history of technology

and suggests that this new understanding of immunity and identity has been

made possible, even inevitable, by advances in genetic and bionic

technologies: rather than an immutable and definitive given, the body is

understood as a functioning construct that is open to continuous exchange

with its surrounding environment (id. ib.). And crucially, he states that, the

immune system may very well be the driving force behind this exchange (id.

ib.).. The immune system is thus not something opposed to the common, but

the very possibility of a genuine intertwining of self and other. As Luhmann

once stated, a frontier is at the same time a place of separation and of

encounter.

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from autopoiesis to autoimmunity in legal systems

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