Paper short abstract:

Increasing numbers of vaccinations present increasing attempts at “biomanagement” of the body and microbes. This paper asks whether, and in what ways, these increasing attempts are producing unruly technologies, discourses and resistance. It also asks what is at stake in such endeavors.

Paper long abstract:

Vaccination has long been considered a modern medical miracle. Its use to prevent disease, presents a targeted means of managing bodies and microbes. In the last three decades, there has been a tremendous increase in the number of vaccinations given to infants and children, as well as a growing number of vaccinations recommended for adults, with hundreds more in development. This paper theorizes this increased "biomanagement" of the body via vaccination and asks whether and in what ways efforts to inoculate ourselves in order to produce immunity are not only producing an unruly regime of pro-vaccination technologies and discourses, but also generating resistance at multiple levels from the microbial to the social. Given the tensions between attempts at achieving immunity through biomanagement and resistance to such attempts, the paper asks what is at stake in techno-scientific endeavors such as mass vaccination campaigns, which presume universal bodies and zero benefit of infection.