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

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Democracy as Medicine and Poison

Achille Mbembe argues that liberal democracy is built on a mythology of equality and freedom. This mythology is pervasive, positioning democracy in the canon of history as representative of moral good. However, Mbembe proposes that liberal democracy is a duality that benefits some while harming others. He draws from the Greek word pharmakon, or remedy, which has a dual connotative meaning: medicine and poison. Mbembe asserts that because democracy is based on colonialism, it holds an intrinsic relationship with violence and oppression.

The mythology of democracy is central to its survival. Mbembe shows how contemporary governments create and wield mythologies to maintain and expand power. The social critic indicates that both fear and desire play a role in maintaining its stronghold: the fear of others and the desire to be protected. By applying a genealogical criticism to the history of colonialism and its shift into contemporary sovereign states, Mbembe exposes how governments rely on these fears and desires to exert total control over human bodies:

The brutality of democracies has simply been swept under the carpet. From their origins, modern democracies have always evinced their tolerance for a certain political violence, including illegal forms of it. They have integrated forms of brutality into their culture, forms borne by a range of private institutions acting on top of the state (17).

Often, the violence of democracies begins with a sense of justice and right-doing. However, Mbembe explains that one cannot build a society on a foundation of violence and then pretend as though that violence did not happen. Thus, the violent power of colonialism carried over into contemporary liberal democracies, making war a defining feature of modern politics. The contemporary version of apartheid that Mbembe discusses has shifted away from public executions and floggings to hidden forms of control. Mbembe pulls from Agamben’s idea of the state of exception, a place where the state can dominate and oppress groups of people outside the confines of the law. Within these spaces, the state’s representatives can enact the inherent violence of colonialism with impunity and without public attention or scrutiny.

Democracy functions as a medicine for those who believe that democratic governments design laws to protect them and guarantee their freedoms. In the trajectory of colonial history, this protected group of people is largely white. Mbembe argues that democracies demote other groups of people to the position of the Other, which those states use to justify violence. This duality functions as a poison for the oppressed group and for the ideal of democracy, which is part of the reason that Mbembe argues that true democracy has never existed.

The Politics of Space

Mbembe theorizes that necropolitics relies on the repeopling and movement of people across the planet’s surface and thus on the politics of space. His work traces the African diaspora as an outcome of colonial violence. In a contemporary context, space becomes an increasingly important mechanism for power. By applying Michel Foucault’s historicist technique of genealogical exploration, Mbembe creates a timeline that shows how the inherent relationship between colonialism and violence continues to inform liberal democracy and modernity.

Mbembe draws from Foucault’s arguments that governments enact power through the control and documentation of life; however, he expands this idea to necropolitics, which proposes that governments enact power through the control of death. Foucault argued in his works that governments wielded control through surveillance and invisible fear. The contemporary age moved discipline and punishment away from overt public display such as hangings and executions to hidden forms of oppression and violence that occur not only within prison walls but also through means such as governmental legislation and policy concerning the unjust claiming and reallocation of space.

Mbembe proposes that such violence is an important technology of colonialism and is inherent to its existence. Without violence, colonialism—and thus democracy—could not exist. Power in the context of colonialism requires a mythology: a narrative that positions one group of people as a hero and another as the Other. Because contemporary punishment is more intimate and concealed (which Mbembe refers to as compression), space is a vital part of the new manifestations of power:

Space was thus the raw material of sovereignty and of the violence it bears within it. Sovereignty meant occupation, and occupation meant relegating the colonized to a third zone between subjecthood and objecthood (79).

Spaces of injury or spaces of exclusion are third spaces in which the state can dominate and control the Other with impunity and outside the confines of the law. Mbembe calls these spaces “deathworlds” because the inhabitants live in limbo between life and death. He provides many historical examples, including plantations, refugee camps, hospitals, reservations, prisons, and state schools. American internment camps and Nazi concentration camps offer historical markers of new technologies of power. The fact that these camps existed out of public view speaks to the hidden and hegemonic nature of such third spaces.

Mbembe predicts that as the human population increases, democracies will need to create additional mythologies and states of exclusion to maintain power. In fact, he claims that much of contemporary culture is already built on symbols that have little to no connection to real life. These mythologies will continue to become more complex and more interwoven with the needs and powers that control fast capitalism. However, limited resources renders the future of democracy a fragile one.

Racism as a Technology for Power

Mbembe’s work explores two definitions of technology. The first is the definition that most associate with it: the innovative development of tools that have altered and continue to change human advancement. In his study of the future, Mbembe asserts that the development of new technologies will continue to complicate how humans think about the nature of humanity and roles within a collective ecology. The other definition of technology that Mbembe examines is the instrument or tool used to create, maintain, and manifest power. Mbembe pulls this word from Heidegger’s technology or instrumentum, a means to an end. A technology of power is a mechanism that helps power achieve a goal—that is, maintain or expand control.

In his necropolitics thesis, Mbembe establishes colonialism as the foundation for democracy. He argues that all modern governments, including liberal democracy, are inherently violent because they are based on colonialism. A government maintains brutality and domination through specific technologies, or tools, that maintain order and advance mythology. Mbembe offers racism as the central tool of colonialism, and he argues that no future for democracy exists that does not intrinsically align with racism.

The reason for this is the duality of fear and desire, a duality that Mbembe posits drives necropolitics. He draws on the work of Hobbes and Locke but claims that the security the social contract provides is not true security against an existential threat. Instead, the social contract provides only false security that provides safety from an invisible and imaginary threat that a narrative of racism creates. Mbembe explains that a social contract needs the Other to create a need for security. Through narratives of fear and desire, governments can enact power at will while turning attention toward enemies that have little chance of defense. On page 98, Mbembe provides a familiar dialogue of isolation and closing borders: narratives that further perpetuate a line of demarcation between the hero and the Other.

Mbembe’s work on racism as a form of technology provides new context to contemporary issues and modern expressions of power. In his conclusion, Mbembe argues that the constant dismantling of colonialism and the inner work of objectively examining one’s own biases and ideologies is necessary to achieve a postcolonial frame of mind. He connects this difficult process to a hopeful view of the future in which collective care replaces individualistic entitlement and colonial violence.