Community, immunity, and autoimmunity in Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Suite Française, and the Island of Missing Trees

This study aims to explore the concepts of community, immunity, and autoimmunity in Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Suite Française, and The Island of Missing Trees, which deal with love and friendship across enemy lines and challenge the friend-enemy dichotomy. Thus, this thesis explores the interactions between political and personal friendship and enmity in wartime and points out that friendship can flourish even across the borders of political enmity. Furthermore, this study examines ethical relationships with an other who is from different origins or nations, religions, and cultures, or an unexpected and undesirable guest. While the three selected literary texts focus on love and friendship across enemy lines in wartime, they also portray immunological mechanisms against external and internal enemies in these communities. Through biopolitical discussion, the conceptual framework of the thesis is built primarily on the philosophical and political use of immunity and autoimmunity and their application to the selected contemporary novels. In this context, the novels will be analyzed through an exploration of immunity and its reciprocal relationship with a community, and (auto)immunity mainly via the work of three contemporary philosophers, Roberto Esposito, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben. Moreover, the discussion on the issue of community will be intensified by Jean-Luc Nancy's, Maurice Blanchot's, Emannuel Levinas's, and Michel Foucault's relevant reflections.