Necropolitics.pdf

Necropolitics refers to the power to dictate who may live and who must die, with sovereignty residing in the capacity to kill or allow to live. This concept, explored by Achille Mbembe, builds on Michel Foucault's notion of biopower, which is the domain of life over which power has taken control. The right to kill, to allow to live, or to expose to death is exercised under specific practical conditions, with the subject of this right being the sovereign.

The implementation of this right reveals the relation of enmity between the person put to death and their murderer. Biopower is insufficient to account for contemporary ways in which politics, under the guise of war or resistance, makes the murder of the enemy its primary objective. War is a means of achieving sovereignty and exercising the right to kill, with life, death, and the human body inscribed in the order of power.

The concept of necropolitics draws on the idea of the state of exception, where the normal state of law is suspended, and the camp is the ultimate sign of absolute power. The death camps are a central metaphor for sovereign and destructive violence, with inhabitants reduced to bare life. The state of exception acquires a permanent spatial arrangement, continually outside the normal state of law.

Modernity has given rise to multiple concepts of sovereignty, with late-modern political criticism privileging normative theories of democracy and reason. However, this perspective neglects the multiplicity of sovereignty and biopolitics, with the ultimate expression of sovereignty being the production of general norms by a body of free and equal individuals.

In contrast, necropolitics highlights the darker aspects of sovereignty, where the power to kill or let live is exercised, and the human body is inscribed in the order of power. This concept challenges traditional notions of sovereignty and biopower, offering a new perspective on the relationship between power, life, and death.