🔴 Necropolitics

 

🔴 Necropolitics

🔹 Definition and Origin

• Necropolitics is a theory explaining how modern states determine whose lives matter and whose deaths are acceptable.

• Coined by Achille Mbembe in 2003 and expanded in his book Necropolitics (2019).

• Builds on Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, but focuses on death instead of life.

🔹 Biopolitics vs. Necropolitics

• Biopolitics: Concerned with preserving life via health, population control, governance.

• Necropolitics: Concerned with managing death — determining which populations are exposed to violence, neglect, and disposability.

• Biopolitics allows to “make live and let die”; Necropolitics goes further to “make die.”

🔹 Real-world Examples

• Gaza: Civilian deaths are treated as acceptable collateral damage.

• Kashmir: Violence and deaths are normalized and underreported compared to other parts of India.

• India’s COVID-19 lockdown: Migrant workers left abandoned, many dying from neglect — showcasing “living death.”

• Bengal famine (1943): Not due to food shortage, but colonial neglect and imperial prioritization.

• HIV/AIDS crisis: Queer, trans, and racial minorities abandoned by healthcare systems — leading to “queer necropolitics.”

🔹 Characteristics of Necropolitics

1. State terror via surveillance, imprisonment, or elimination.

2. Collusion with non-state actors (private militias/criminal groups).

3. Permanent enmity used to justify violence.

4. War as economy — arms trade and surveillance industry thrive.

5. Resource predation — displacing communities for profit.

6. Death by design — drone strikes, starvation, torture, and structural neglect.

7. Moral justifications — via nationalism, religion, or utility logic.

🔹 State of Exception (Agamben)

• Modern democracies create permanent exceptions for certain communities (Muslims, migrants, Dalits).

• Law is suspended selectively to target “invented enemies.”

🔹 "Living Dead" Concept

• Individuals forced to live in dehumanized conditions without rights or recognition.

• They are biologically alive but socially and politically erased.

• Example: India’s migrant workers walking hundreds of kilometers during lockdown.

🔹 Death Worlds

• Places where people are actively abandoned or exposed to violent death or slow suffering.

• Gaza, refugee camps, detention centers, slums, and caste-segregated villages function as such zones.

🔹 Everyday Necropolitics

• Occurs not just in war, but through:

  • Caste-based sterilisation programs

  • Biased policing and surveillance

  • Bureaucratic exclusion from welfare

  • Discrimination in healthcare access

🔹 Global Indifference

• The world watches silently as mass killings and oppression continue (e.g., Gaza).

• Selective mourning: Some lives are widely grieved, others are ignored.

🔹 Conclusion: Resistance and Recognition

• The goal should not be mere survival but the right to live a dignified life, with grief, justice, and recognition.

• Necropolitics thrives on silence, and breaking that silence is a form of resistance.