The aim of this thesis is to address and problematize how an undemocratic event like the Capitol riot on January 6th, 2021 could occur in the United States, the nation that for so long has been perceived to be the world’s leading democracy. The thesis takes a point of departure in French philosopher Jaques Derrida’s theory of autoimmunity, which is a theory aiming to explain how democracies are at constant risk of developing autoimmune reactions within their institutions, causing them to undermine their own values and principles. Three theoretical areas were derived from the theory: Hospitality, Ipseity, and Democracy to come, and through an interpretive content analysis of the nine public committee hearings taking place after the riot, these areas could detect symptoms of democratic autoimmunity in the event. The findings of the research thus shed light on the autoimmune tendencies that exist within the very core of democracy, and that was brought to the forefront on January 6th, 2021. Further, the results point to the fact that because of these autoimmune tendencies, the democratic institutions in the United States are still - after this event - exposed to simultaneous threats and opportunities that can come to change the course of democracy in the nation.

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京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(医学) / 甲第23806号 / 医博第4852号 / 新制||医||1058(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院医学研究科医学専攻 / (主査)教授 森信 暁雄, 教授 上野 英樹, 教授 椛島 健治 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Medical Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

<p>This thesis examines how the late work of Jacques Derrida challenges the efficacy of the concept of biopolitics to describe the relationship between life and politics. The central question that occupies this thesis is how life becomes part of the political, how it exits the putative spontaneity of nature and enters the calculation of sovereignty. In order to posit this question, my work is organized according to two horizons. The first horizon centers on the ways in which Derrida configures the relationship between life and politics. The second horizon is that the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center or what is now known as September 11 or 9/11 became an event around which Derrida bends this critique of life in politics.</p> <p>My first chapter looks to Derrida’s concept of autoimmunity as a way to articulate the problematic conflation of life and politics by the term “biopolitics.” While Derrida does not explicitly state his complication of this term, I argue that “autoimmunity” positions life as an impossibly unstable concept, one that cannot and should not be confined to a single understanding. My second chapter turns to the first volume of Derrida’s final seminars The Beast and The Sovereign. This chapter continues many of the themes pursued in the first chapter, but changes the focus from an autoimmune critique of democracy toward a more generalized critique of human life as political and non-human life as apolitical. Ultimately I pursue the idea that Derrida sought to rethink a configuration of the political that apprehends life in excess of politics. Derrida imagines a politics that escapes being pulled into the political and contoured into so many configurations of death and subjugation.</p> / Master of English