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Paper short abstract

Drawing on affect studies and João Florêncio’s concept of “porous masculinities,” this paper rethinks immunity as an affective, relational process shaped by intimacy, pleasure, and care. It challenges immunitarian logics of closure underpinning exclusionary politics and the body politic.

Paper long abstract

This paper engages contemporary debates on immunitarian politics by rethinking immunity not as closure or defense against the Other, but as a relational and transformative condition of life, community, and the political. Drawing on queer HIV/AIDS histories, biomedical transformations (U=U, PrEP), and João Florêncio’s concept of “porous masculinities,” I examine how dominant immunitarian imaginaries - rooted in sealed bodies, hardened borders, and masculinist ideals of autonomy - are destabilized from within practices of sexual intimacy and care.

Combining political philosophy, queer and affect studies, the paper traces how gay men living with or around HIV have been historically constructed as immunitary threats: “infected,” contaminating, and socially disposable. Against this backdrop, contemporary HIV pharmacotechnologies reconfigure risk, intimacy, and embodiment, enabling forms of queer subjectivity grounded in porosity, mutual exposure, and ethical openness to the Other. Rather than negating boundaries, these practices enact what I conceptualize as membrane-like immunity: relational and sustaining life through exchange.

Mobilizing Roberto Esposito’s distinction between immunitas and communitas, I argue that porous queer masculinities expose the limits of state-centered, exclusionary models of immunity that underpin reactionary politics, xenophobia, and border regimes. By foregrounding vulnerability, pleasure, and care as political forces, the paper proposes immunity as a site of collective becoming - one that reimagines the body politic beyond fantasies of purity, security, and sealed sovereignty. In doing so, it contributes to anthropological and philosophical debates on immunity, multispecies materiality, and the fragile conditions of contemporary community.