[Reviewer Pele says author Mbembe defines “necropolitics”
“as the political making of spaces and subjectivities in an
in-between of life and death.” Necropolitical practices have their
origins in colonialism and the slave plantation.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

ACHILLE MBEMBE: NECROPOLITICS  
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Antonio Pele
March 2, 2020
Critical Legal Thinking
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_ Reviewer Pele says author Mbembe defines “necropolitics” “as
the political making of spaces and subjectivities in an in-between of
life and death.” Necropolitical practices have their origins in
colonialism and the slave plantation. _

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_Necropolitics_
Achille Mbembe
Duke University Press
ISBN: 978-1-4780-0651-0

The economic and political management of human populations through
their exposure to death has become a global phenomenon. Wars,
genocides, refugee “crisis”, ecocide and contemporary processes of
pauperization and precarization reveal how increasing masses of
individuals are now governed through their direct and indirect
exposure to death. In order to unpack those processes, Achille Mbembe
came up with the notion of necropolitics, first in 2003 with an essay
bearing the same name, and then in 2016, with the book _Politiques de
l’inimiti__é_, translated and published in English in 2019,
as _Necropolitics_.1 With this latter notion, Mbembe explores and
radicalizes Foucault’s concept of biopolitics.

In the last lecture of _“Society must be Defended” _and in the
last chapter of _The History of Sexuality (Vol.1_), Foucault noticed
how biopolitics
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that is, the positive power over life can become a deadly form of
power. It is not only a “calculated management of life” but also a
“power to expose a whole population to death”.2Drawing on the
dramatic experiences of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes and on the
global nuclear threat, Foucault highlighted how human masses are
eliminated in the name of the protection and survival of a nation, a
people and/or a class. Besides, he noted how racism has become the
political tool that enables the biological division of the human
species and the justification of the extermination of those considered
inferior. Foucault insisted modern racism has developed with the
“colonizing genocide”, so that the right to take life could be
justified.3 Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito have explored these
foucauldian observations with the notions of “_homo saccer_” and
“_thanatopolitics_”, insisting respectively on the sovereign right
to kill with impunity and the biological/pathological justifications
of humans’ exterminations.4 Mbembe’s necropolitics offers a novel
approach as it draws both on Foucault and a decolonial approach (often
inspired in Frantz Fanon) and conceives of necropolitics as the
political making of spaces and subjectivities in an _in-between_ of
life and death. The colony in general and the slavery plantation in
particular have given birth to those necropolitical practices —
fostered by white supremacy — that still continue today.

THE SUBJUGATION OF LIFE TO THE POWER OF DEATH

Necropolitics entails the “subjugation of life to the power of
death”. In “our contemporary world” — following Mbembe —
various types of “weapons are deployed in the interest of maximum
destruction of persons and the creation of _death-worlds_, new and
unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are
subjugated to conditions of life conferring upon them the status
of _living-dead_”.5 This production of “_death-worlds_” is
carried on by three main factors I will define subsequently. On the
one hand, necropolitics entails a _necroeconomy_. Modern capitalism
would produce nowadays an excess of populations that could not be
exploited anymore but require to be managed precisely through their
exposure to deadly dangers and risks. The so-called “climate
crisis” is maybe the most illustrative example of this
necroeconomy, along with the current destruction of public/social
goods and rights. On the other hand, necropolitics draws on
the _confinement of certain populations_ in particular spaces:
campsites. Relying on Agamben’s insights, Mbembe holds that the
camp-form (refugees, prisons, _banlieues_, suburbs, _favelas_) has
become a prevailing way of governing unwanted populations. The latter
are enclosed in precarious and militarized spaces so that they can be
controlled, harassed and potentially killed. It is “a permanent
condition of ‘living in pain’ ”.6

The third and “key characteristic” of necropolitics is “_to
produce death in a large scale_”. This aspect is developed, in
particular, in a subpart untitled “Relation Without Desire” from
the First Chapter “Exit From Democracy”
of _Necropolitics _(2019). It is possible to explain this
characteristic, highlighting seven traits that, according to my
understanding, seem to underpin Mbembe’s account on the issue.

1) _State terror_: The State persecutes, imprisons and eliminates
certain populations so that political and social contestations can be
neutralized. Those repressive tactics are operated not only by
totalitarian regimes but also by contemporary liberal and illiberal
countries.

2) _The shared use of violence_: In many cases, the State does not
have and willingly shares the monopoly of violence with other private
actors (i.e. militias, paramilitary), increasing the circulation and
use of weapons in society. The latter is therefore divided between
“those who are protected (because armed) from those who are not”.7

3) _The “link of enmity”_: According to Mbembe, in a society
where the possession and nonpossessions of weapons define one’s
social value, all social bonds are destroyed. The link of enmity
normalizes therefore the “idea that power can be acquired and
exercised only at the price of another’s life”.8

4) _War_: “Coercion itself has become a market
commodity”.9 Nowadays, war and terror have become modes of
production on their own, and as such need to generate new military
markets.10

5) _The predation of natural resources_: In order to exploit
valuable natural resources, populations are displaced and eliminated
(i.e. indigenous people in the Amazon rain forest) though the active
and hidden collaboration of the State, public forces, international
corporations and criminal organizations.

6) _Different modes of killing_: The exposure to death is multiple:
tortures, mutilations, mass killings, high-tech elimination through
“drone strikes” represent various modalities of necropolitical
devices.

7) _Different moral justifications_: According to Mbembe, atrocities
are justified for various reasons such as the eradication of
corruption, different types of “therapeutic liturgy”, “the
desire for sacrifice”, “messianic eschatologies”, and even
“modern discourses of utilitarianism, materialism, and
consumerism”.11

Necropolitics implies therefore a closed entrenchment of political,
economic and military devices, oriented towards the eliminations of
human populations. But along with this aspect, necropolitics is also
deployed through “small doses” of death that structure the
everyday life of individuals.12

LESS HUMAN THAN HUMAN

Along with mass killings and exterminations, Mbembe argues that
necropolitics implies a surveillance on individuals not so much for
the purposes of discipline, but to extract from them a maximum of
utility, such as in the case of sexual slavery.13The instillation of
those _“small doses” of death_ in the daily existences of many
individuals also comes from “unbounded social, economic, and
symbolic violence” that destroy their bodies and the value of their
social existence.14 Daily humiliations perpetrated by public forces
on certain populations, the strategy of “small massacres”
inflicted one day at a time, and the absence of basic social goods
(e.g. sanitation, housing) bring about a kind of existence whose value
“is the sort of death able to be inflicted upon it”.15 Under
those circumstances, necropolitics consists

in the power to manufacture an entire crowd of people who specifically
live at the edge of life, or even on its outer edge — people for
whom living means continually standing up to death …. This life is a
superfluous one, therefore, whose price is so meager that it has no
equivalence, whether market or — even less — human …. Nobody
even bears the slightest feelings of responsibility or justice towards
this sort of life or, rather, death. Necropolitical power proceeds by
a sort of inversion between life and death, as if life was merely
death’s medium.16

Under everyday necropolitics, a mass of populations live under extreme
precarious conditions and as such, can be exploited and eliminated
“naturally”. Mbembe singles out racism as the main criteria that
allow necropolitics to be performed and expand in society. Along with
an “_hydraulic racism_” that defines institutional racism
(State, law, administration), Mbembe pays attention to a
so-called “_nanoracism_” that is deployed in everyday social
relations, and is designed to stigmatize, to injure and to humiliate
“those not considered to be one of us”.17Taking into account
current political, social and symbolic forms of violence that are
deployed worldwide, Mbembe’s notion of necropolitics represents a
relevant heuristic category for contemporary critical thought.

_Antonio Pele is an Associate Professor at the Law School of the
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro._

1   See: Achille Mbembe (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture 15
(1): 11-40 (trans. Libby Meintjes).  (2016). Politiques de
l’Inimitié, Paris: La Découverte. (2019). Necropolitics.
Durham/London: Duke University Press (trans. Steve Corcoran)
 
2   Michel Foucault, (1978) The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An
Introduction. New-York: Pantheon Books (trans. Robert Hurley), pp. 137
& 140.

3   Michel Foucault, (1997),“Society Must Be Defended”. Lectures
at the Collège de France 1975-76. New-York: Picador (trans. David
Macey), p. 257. 

4   Giorgio Agamben (1998), Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare
Life, Stanford: Stanford University Press (trans. Daniel
Heller-Roazen). Roberto Esposito (2008), Bíos. Biopolitics and
Philosophy,Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press
(trans. Timothy Campbell)

5   Achille Mbembe (2003). “Necropolitics”, pp. 39 & 40

6   Achille Mbembe (2003). “Necropolitics”, p. 39.

7   Achille Mbembe (2019). Necropolitics, p. 35

8   Ibid.

9   (2019). Necropolitics, p. 84.

10  p. 36

11  Ibid.

12  pp. 36-38

13  p. 36

14  p. 39

15  p. 38

16  pp. 37 & 38.

17  p. 58.

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* Racism
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* colonialism
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* Critical Theory
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* Philosophy
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