Necropolitics

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 1

Chapters 2-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapter 6-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary: “Viscerality”

Mbembe offers a careful chronological exploration that traces the unique challenges of modernity to their roots in colonialism. Rather than providing freedom and collective security from harm, the social contract is a form of enforced security against a mythologized evil, or the Other. In the modern era, what Mbembe calls the “Dark Enlightenment” (a period marked by dooming predictions about the future of the planet and social order) accelerates the fear that informs the mythology of democracy. Mbembe asserts that the contemporary age is a “time of planetary entanglement” (93), a term he uses to describe the complex webs of connections that drive 21st-century capitalism and technology. Mbembe proposes that the danger of this nihilistic approach to social criticism is that it guarantees and affirms the continued oppression of marginalized groups.

The author returns to his argument of racism as a technology and examines Martin Heidegger’s definition of the term “technology” in the Western philosophical tradition. In Heidegger’s definition for instrumentum, technology is both an action and a way of thinking. Humans gain freedom when they oppose the technologies that rule their lives. Mbembe warns about the dangers of the future if an increased complexity of entanglement driven by technology, in its traditional sense, continues to become more sophisticated.

In addition to entanglement, another technology of modernity is contraction. Mbembe moves beyond his original discussion of walls as demarcations of boundaries and argues that democracies use an additional instrument: “a matrix of rules” (96). These rules are often more broadly applied within a state of exception toward marginalized groups that a dominating group has deemed unwanted and unnecessary. The blockade is a powerful tool for maintaining control: refugee camps, Nazi and American concentration camps, American Civil War prison camps, and the Israeli occupation of Gaza are examples of these contemporary applications of colonialist tools. Borders represent a postcolonial form of violence.

Mbembe takes a dim view of the mythology that modernity and planetary entanglement represent. He proposes that people will increasingly panic as they face the dystopian repercussions of a system that requires a distinction between a hero and the Other. However, he finds encouragement in the growing number of voices, including those in Europe, pushing back against the forces of capitalism and colonialism. How humans think about space in the future and their willingness to confront issues of confirmation bias will determine their success as a species. Finally, the author proposes that the greatest threat to democracy is not those opposed to it but the capitalist elite who will continue to create new types of third spaces in which to carry out evasion and domination.

Chapter 5 Summary: “Fanon’s Pharmacy”

Mbembe marks this chapter as a diversion from the first four, which focus on establishing enmity and racism as inherent to the spirit of necropolitics. Here, he examines the psychological impact of democracy on marginalized groups, positioning this chapter as the exploration of the other side of the coin of pharmakon—the poison of liberal democracy. Mbembe draws from the work of philosopher Frantz Fanon, who argued that violence is inherent to colonialism. Fanon determined that modern society divides law among two groups—those to whom it applies and those to whom it does not.

Fanon’s work as a psychologist caused him to focus on the mental impact of persistent racism and violence. He argues that the inevitable outcome is also the hallmark of the current age: isolation. Mbembe applies a historicist lens beginning with the simultaneous global fracturing and global networking of World War I. The wars of the 20th century helped shape contemporary displays of power. Europe further perpetuated violence by positioning itself as the default: “Thus hypostasized and placed on a pedestal, Western culture or civilization became the zero point of orientation of the humanities” (122). The term “camp” defines the third spaces of injury, where states control groups outside the central metaphysical orientation.

Chapters 4-5 Analysis

In these chapters, Mbembe focuses on thematic discussion of Racism as a Technology for Power. Using historical examples, he shows that racism creates a mythology: a narrative that positions one part of a population as the Other and another part as the hero. Because the earlier chapters established the duality of fear and desire as the framework for this type of mythology, this section expands on how racism represents the poisonous side of the pharmakon. Mbembe relates his own concept of democracy as pharmakon to psychologist Fanon’s pharmacy, which promotes decolonization as a step toward health and well-being. The connection between these two ideas is duality. The antidote to the poison of democracy is decolonization.

Mbembe refers to technology in two ways. The first is technology as an instrument for power. This section explores the use of narratives and symbols as mechanisms of control. The other use of the term technology is the traditional sense, which Mbembe uses to uncover how states might enact colonialism in future contexts.

Mythologies are important for carrying colonialism and democracy forward. Mbembe proposes that modern politics and Western cultures rely almost entirely on symbols and mythologies that have little connection to the real world. In addition, Mbembe argues that liberal democracies justify racism through domination and control to compensate for both the fears and the desires of the dominating group. States exert this technology through the complex social contract of necropolitics, which manifests in one of two ways: as unadorned racism or as cultural racism. Just as he explored the duality of philosopher’s thinking both in critique of and in alignment with Western philosophy in earlier chapters, Mbembe both uses Martin Heidegger’s work to support his own ideas and to show where colonialism limited Heidegger’s thinking. This is particularly interesting in the context of Heidegger’s ideas about freedom and technological systems.

In this section, Mbembe begins to move his exploration away from a historicist view—even as he details the history of American slavery and its impact on the development of modern colonial violence and democracy. Instead, he focuses on the future. He returns once more to dualities, signaling the two approaches to futurist critique: hopeful and pessimistic views of power and technology. Mbembe admits that he aligns with those focused on finding solutions because he finds that nihilist approaches create a framework that tends to justify and overlook continued violence. Dualities appear repeatedly throughout Mbembe’s work and in all three themes. The juxtaposition of past and future adds to this throughline.

Mbembe’s focus on the future provides several avenues for exploration in a contemporary context. For example, a passage on how modern societies organize space connects to current discussions about population movement and border control, thematically developing The Politics of Space: “Borders. Everything begins with them […] Increasingly, they are the name used to describe the organized violence that underpins both contemporary capitalism and our world order in general” (99). Mbembe further critiques the West’s pervasive influence and the potential for new forms of nanoracism.

Mbembe strongly condemns European countries as the harbingers of modern-age evils. On page 102, he poses a series of questions about the sources of several downfalls of the 20th and 21st centuries. For each question of blame, Mbembe enthusiastically points a finger at Europe. He argues that a future free from the oppressive technologies of liberal democracy requires global acknowledgement that the racism persists in the modern world, further developing the theme of Racism as a Technology for Power. In addition to exploring the word “technology” as an instrument for power, Mbembe turns his attention to technology in its traditional usage and the growing concerns about artificial intelligence (AI). He likewise examines how states use technology to support necropolitics by suggesting that data is another mechanism of violence: “Power, thus, is increasingly about identifying patterns or connections in random data, in a context in which the opposition between information and knowledge […] appears to collapse” (109). The quantification of bodies represents a new type of control.