Necropolitics

Achille Mbembe

Published by Duke University Press 2019

Necropolitics

Achille Mbembe

In the series Theory in Forms

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478007227

Overview
Contents

About this book

Achille Mbembe theorizes the genealogy of the contemporary world—one plagued by inequality, militarization, enmity, and a resurgence of racist, fascist, and nationalist forces—and calls for a radical revision of humanism a the means to create a more just society.

Author / Editor information

Achille Mbembe is Research Professor in History and Politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economy Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is author of Critique of Black Reason and coeditor of Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis, both also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

"The appearance of Achille Mbembe's Necropolitics will change the terms of debate within the English-speaking world. Trenchant in his critique of racism and its relation to the precepts of liberal democracy, Mbembe continues where Foucault left off, tracking the lethal afterlife of sovereign power as it subjects whole populations to what Fanon called ‘the zone of non-being.’ Mbembe not only engages with biopolitics, the politics of enmity, and the state of exception; he also opens up the possibility of a global ethic, one that relies less on sovereign power than on the transnational resistance to the spread of the death-world."

-- Judith Butler

“This book establishes Achille Mbembe as the leading humanistic voice in the study of sovereignty, democracy, migration, and war in the contemporary world. Mbembe accomplishes the nearly impossible task of finding a radical path through the darkness of our times and seizes hope from the jaws of what he calls ‘the deadlocks of humanism.’ It is not a comforting book to read, but it is an impossible book to put down.”

-- Arjun Appadurai

“Mbembe refreshes the debate in a Europe consumed by the ‘desire of apartheid.’ This is a man who is not afraid to throw national history, identities, and borders out the window. French universalism? ‘Conceited,’ asserts Mbembe. . . . In the style of Edouard Glissant . . . he doesn’t limit his geography to the level of the nation but expands it to the ‘Whole-World.’ He dreams of writing a common history of humanity that would deflate all the flashy national heroism and redraw new relations between the self and the other. In a France and a Europe which are even afraid of their own shadows, one can clearly see the subversive potential of Mbembe’s thought. His latest book Necropolitics, draws the unpleasant portrait of a continent eaten up by the desire of ‘apartheid,’ moved by the obsessive search for an enemy, and with war as its favorite game.”

-- Cécile Daumas, Libération

“[Mbembe’s] new book . . . is a precious tool to understand what occurs in the North as well as in the South. The analyses of this faithful reader of Franz Fanon are irrevocable: war has become not an exception but a permanent state, ‘the sacrament of our era’. . . . One of the biggest challenges we have to face, Mbembe warns us, is to defend our democracies while including this ‘other’ whom we don’t want if we are to build our common future.”

-- Séverine Kodjo-Grandvaux and Michael Pauron Jeune Afrique

"[Mbembe's] latest and eminently readable offering . . . speaks to the spirit of our times with such clarity and profundity that it bears all the hallmarks of an instant classic of anti-racist literature."

-- Ashish Ghadiali Red Pepper

"[Necropolitics] is a book that is in places rather complex to read but it is deﬁnitely worth persevering with, since it is ﬁlled with interesting insights into such issues as racism, the role of borders and separation, terrorism and its political expression and the mundane and everyday forms of enmity and hatred that shape the contemporary world around us."

-- John Solomos Ethnic and Racial Studies

“Hardly a single longform essay, Necropolitics is a portal of intricate thoughts on the state of the planet. … Mbembe’s latest work is a signiﬁcant contribution to political and critical theory. Necropolitics is the book of this stiﬂing hour, Mbembe its chronicler.”

-- Eric Otieno Postcolonial Studies

“Necropolitics pursues the themes of race and sovereign power as they relate to borders, prisons, war, and policing in the wake of decolonization and the aftermath of the U.S. civil rights struggle…. Mbembe’s commitment to articulating a common humanity as praxis, or as a humanity in creation, when institutions of life-making, care, and social reproduction are subjugated to the overwhelming power of death-making institutions, is what sets Necropolitics apart from other literatures that take up these questions.”

-- Anuja Bose Contemporary Political Theory

"Necropolitics would be a relevant supplementary text for graduate courses in theory political sociology and international relations.… The book provides the reader with fundamental perspectives on race, that align with common critiques of democracy and Foucault's concept of bioppower while drawing on Fanon's work."

-- Kendall L. Gilliam International Social Science Review

"Before Covid-19, Mbembe’s picture of a world enchanted by its own practice of mass murder-suicide in the name of democracy and liberal values seemed accurate enough. After, or during, or whenever we are, Mbembe’s prescience is horrifying, comforting, and absolutely necessary."

-- Aria Dean Artforum

"Some of Mbembe’s most penetrating and sustained meditations on democracy, race, colonialism, and his continued theorization of biopolitics. . . . Corcoran’s translation of Mbembe’s dense philosophical rhetoric manages to communicate its poetic character and vital pulse."

-- Patrick Lyons French Studies

"Mbembe’s work on necropolitics demonstrates how contemporary societies have exited democracy, renewing the camp and other colonial practices to create death worlds and a society of separation. Necropolitics makes an important contribution through outlining the conditions of hatred and separation that constitute contemporary death worlds."

-- Patrick Dwyer Canadian Review of Law and Society

"Necropolitics enriches African Studies while staying away from conventional tropes and stereotypes of identity politics. . . . In relation to African studies, the contribution of Mbembe’s Necropolitics lies in repositioning Africans as a divergent ‘minor’ process committed to actualizing futurity as a site of production of novel ethics, an ethics of connecting with the African past not as something dead and gone, but as emblematic of ‘a living labor’ that might produce the new Earth."

-- Saswat Samay Das, Dibyendu Sahana Africa Spectrum

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction The Ordeal of the World Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
One Exit from Democracy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
Two The Society of Enmity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	42
Three Necropolitics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	66
Four Viscerality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
Five Fanon’s Pharmacy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
Six This Stifling Noonday Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	156
Conclusion Ethics of the Passerby Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	184
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 224

eBook

Published: October 25, 2019
ISBN: 9781478007227