POROUS SKINS: Life beyond Immunity

Abstract

What does it mean to be human in a world that isboth viral and vulnerable? The current pandemic has made clear that we liveporous lives in a porous world of bacteria, microbes, viruses, organic bodies,and non-organic matter. Tracing the motif of human and posthuman skin in MargePiercy’s Science Fiction, this article argues that simply equating porositywith threats to life, and with such dangers only, is a dangerous misconception,albeit one which can offer a pragmatic last resort in a situation of pandemicemergency. Yet as the touch of the held-out hand is more and more sorelymissed, it might be time to open our horizons of imagination beyond thesimplistic notion that human life is in need of constant containment in skins,walls and borderlines, lest it spill out and expose its vulnerability. Skin isour most natural but also most ambivalent border which protects as much as itenmeshes us. It can open our horizons of imagination to ways of existence thatare not solely reliant on immunity and insulation. This article travels intoMarge Piercy’s dystopian future and back to a year 2020 in which the illusionof immunity has been shattered. It acknowledges the porosity of human skin as areminder that life is always a threat to itself, even whilst survival at thecost of life is just another form of death. Yet skin, so naturally ambivalent,offers a third way to seek a future-bound human life that might be sustainablein all its precariousness. Working within an ecocritical framework, thisarticle aims to re-assess the concept of immunity from a position of porosityand enmeshment in the natural world.