Necropolitics - Achille Mbembe

Translated by Steven Corcoran

Originally published in 2016 as Politiques de l’inimitié by Editions La Découverte

English translation published in 2019 by Duke University Press, Durham, NC

ISBN: 9781478006510 (pbk)

LCCN:2019009527 (print)

LCC: JC328.6 .M3913 2019 (print)

For the past century, the world has constantly lived in the shadow of war. Following the expansive, costly, and deeply traumatic wars of the early twentieth century, the United States engaged in a long and anxiety-riddled Cold War with the Soviet Union, as each lived on the precipice of destruction, yet staved off annihilation through mutually assured destruction. We also engaged in proxy wars on foreign soil in East Asia (Korea and Vietnam), consistently intervened in Central and South America (namely, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Chile), and remain embroiled in conflicts in the Middle East, stretching from the Gulf Wars to the War in Afghanistan, which has now spanned two decades in length. Alongside the obvious violence of war, we also have lived in an era marked by political violence, mass migration as a result of destabilization, and the lingering tendrils of colonialism. The regulation of bodies by Western powers - whether through enclosure, mass incarceration, or death - is often justified under the guise of “security,” but reveals the darker underside of our neoliberal order. 

Accordingly, in the 2019 English translation of his work, Necropolitics, Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe utilizes the work of Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon to uncover this “nocturnal body of democracy.” Spanning a wide array of academic disciplines such as political theory, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial theory, Mbembe examines our current geopolitical landscape of mass surveillance, terrorism, and increasing militarization, diagnosing how freedom and human rights have been eroded in the face of rising nationalist forces.

Overview:

Necropolitics is composed of a series of extended essays centered on political violence, post-colonialism, and what Mbembe describes as the “nocturnal body of democracy.” In the face of globalization that promises to shrink the world, Mbembe argues that we are facing a backlash of racist, nationalist, and violent ideologies, epitomized by increasingly nativist policies toward militarization and immigration. Riffing off of Foucault notion of biopolitics -- which is the way power is justified and exerted in not only managing the details of life but also in exposing entire peoples to death in the name of another group’s survival (a phenomenon which Foucault observed within the ideologies of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes) -- Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics incorporates Fanon’s post-colonial approach and describes how we create spaces that occupy a liminal space between life and death. 

These spaces, Mbembe argues, find their roots in the colony and slave plantation, and served as foundational to modern liberal democracy. The practices of necropolitics -- which persist in wars, genocides, refugee crises, state terror, torture, territories controlled by militias, and the exploitation of natural resources -- function to manage human populations through directly and indirectly exposing them to death. While Mbembe coined the term “necropolitics” in 2003, just after 9/11 and at the beginning of the “War on Terror,” this work places Mbembe’s concept within the context of the current crises that liberal democratic states are facing in the face of an incredibly unstable global capitalist economy, and the rise of authoritarian tendencies that proliferate as a result of these crises. 

Mbembe emphasizes that his writing style throughout the work is unorthodox, often wandering in “more or less discontinuous lines, of raw and rapid gestures, and even slight movements of withdrawal followed by abrupt reversals” (1). The common thread that runs through the book is Mbembe’s use of Fanon to diagnose the new religion of our time -- namely, war-- and its effects on the way we regulate and destroy the body of the Other. For Mbembe, necropolitics is a way of subjugating life to the power of death, in which we create various modes of “death-worlds,” in which populations are constantly subjected to death and destruction, marking them apart as a kind of “living dead.” Since modern capitalism, in its endless proliferation, has produced subjects who can no longer be exploited, this excess population must be regulated by exposing them to unending precarity and danger. 

One of the prevailing ways in which governments regulate and confine these undesirable populations is through confinement, epitomized by the camp (prisons, refugee camps, favelas, etc). These are spaces that are constantly surveillanced and exist outside of the regular conditions of law and order. In these death worlds, populations live in a state of perpetual precarity as they are exposed to small doses of humiliations and death (such as depriving them of necessities). These groups stand on the precipice of death, an excessive population living on the outer edges of life, which is then used to justify their extermination on a large scale, as their lives are seen as ultimately insignificant or of marginal value. 

Racism, according to Mbembe, is one of the primary mechanisms that this necropolitical framework utilizes. Alongside systemic and institutional racism that manifests in our legal codes and state apparatuses, Mbembe also addresses “nanoracism,” which are small, everyday occurrences of racism that build up and ultimately stigmatize and dehumanize the Other. Both of these forms are rooted within the history of modern Western democracy and its dependence on colonialism, which requires systemic inequality to operate and sustain itself. 

In a globalized world defined by soft-power warfare and accelerated economic, political, and social relations through the use of digital technology and the Internet, we are increasingly becoming a “society of enmity,” especially when we consider the rise of nationalism, proto-fascist ideology, and mass migration as a result of climate change. Particularly in the United States, Mbembe argues, we rely on the figure of an enemy, whether it might be the communist in the 1950s or “illegal” immigrant and Islamic terrorist today (while ignoring the plight of white supremacist terrorism that is much more common on our soil) to justify greater investments in our military industry and surveillance technology, both of which threaten human rights. Through mass incarceration and refugee camps with abhorrent sanitation and destitute living conditions, we create “death worlds to contain and regulate a superfluous population that cannot be utilized by capital and are thus subject to inhumane treatment and death. We can see this echoed in other countries in history, such as South African apartheid and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East. 

This xenophobia and need for a scapegoat is not an aberration of liberal democracy, but rather an integral feature of it. Mbembe traces the development of Enlightenment rationalism and the utilization of terror for political purposes. Modernity, he argues, was built on the creation of these permanent spaces separate from the normal operations of civil life. These states of exceptions hang their identity on the fictionalized figure of the Other who must be contained, dehumanized, and destroyed. This is why necropolitics is so closely linked to racism, as we have approached a time in which democracy is beginning to crumble and eat itself alive as it embraces its nocturnal side. With the resurgence of nationalism, far-right extremism, and white-supremacist violence, liberal democracy is increasingly embracing its violent roots of imperialism, colonialism, and racism. 

While this is undoubtedly a bleak picture of our current condition, Mbembe argues that utilizing the work of Frantz Fanon, we can work to create a better, truly democratic world based on common kinship and community. For Mbembe, this starts with an internal transformation that prioritizes care, vulnerably opening ourselves to the Other, and cultivating decolonized communities. 

Commendations: 

First of all, Mbembe deftly addresses the role of racism, colonialism, and slavery in the constitution of liberal democratic societies. Mbembe, in much of his work, is never too far away from Fanon, and he uses Fanon’s work to expand Foucault’s concept of biopower and bring it into the 21st century. Mbembe has an unwavering commitment to revealing the dark underside of our liberal democratic order, and the necropolitics that holds it up through exploitation, brutality, and death. 

Yet, Mbembe also calls attention to the shortcomings and gaps within Foucault’s biopolitics and seeks to redress them through his necropolitical model. In this framework, sovereignty is defined as the power an entity has over life and death, and Mbembe takes this concept and applies it in interesting ways, such as the creation of armed militias in remote areas where a singular sovereign authority is not present. In these contested territories, the nation-state does not matter; rather, power is exerted by creating terror and through the threat of death. 

Furthermore, Mbembe highlights the crucial role of technology in managing populations and exerting discipline through surveillance, drones, and aerial bombardment. Mbembe does a commendable job in tracing the origins of liberal democracies while also addressing the increasing role of mass surveillance, militarization, and techno-capitalism that reveal the underlying rot within our liberal political order. The danger of this revelation, however, is the threat of authoritarian and ultra-nationalist forces that arise out of response to the failure of liberalism, as we saw in the early 20th century. 

As for its technical merits, Necropolitics is a work of poetry almost just as much as an academic treatise. Like most of Mbembe’s other works, Necropolitics utilizes many poetic flairs and analogies throughout the text. While this can make for confusing reading at times (indeed, Mbembe even admits as much in the first pages of the Introduction), it also makes for an artful read that holds a multiplicity of meaning. As such, this work would be a great addition to a graduate course on post-colonialism, international relations, and political theory. By connecting the legacy of colonialism and slavery to current issues in immigration policy and conflict in the Middle East, Mbembe opens up a space for the creation of a new universalized subject, thus creating the opportunity for solidarity.

Critique: 

On the other hand, it must be noted that this work is incredibly dense and difficult, especially for those who have no background in Foucault, Freud, and Fanon. Even for me, who is familiar with these topics, I often had to read paragraphs two or three times before either understanding or just giving up and moving on, hoping it will make sense later. Mbembe meanders and wanders through various topics without much organization, and his digressions, while often illuminating, rarely return to a central argument. This might be partially due to the fact that this book consists of a series of essays, which can be disjointed from one another at times. This becomes readily apparent when one comes across examples of intratextual near-plagiarism, where Mbembe almost word-for-word repeats himself (the most egregious examples to be found by comparing pages 36-37 and page 87). 

He also switches between academic and poetic registers often throughout the text, and some of the poetic descriptions tend to obscure more than they elucidate. Mbembe often uses mixed metaphors that seem to be lost in translation and don’t have a clear meaning. One example of this is a paragraph that I wrestled with for far too long, trying to understand what exactly these metaphors meant: 

Indeed, in the salt marshes of this beginning of this century, there is strictly nothing left to hide. The barrel now scraped, all taboos have been broken, after an attempt to kill off secrecy and the forbidden as such, all is brought to its transparency and therefore also called to its ultimate realization. The tank is almost full and twilight cannot be delayed. Whether or not this denouement takes place in a deluge of fire, we really will find out soon enough (57).

I’m pretty sure I understand the gist of what he’s trying to say with these descriptions, but it's a bit muddled and overly-confusing. There are many places in the book like this, which, while breaking up the dry, academic sections, still makes for rather slow and laborious reading. In my mind, I imagine that this is primarily an issue of translation and the difficulty of conveying Mbembe’s dual registers adequately in English. Unfortunately, that leaves the work rather impenetrable except for the most highly-motivated of readers. 

Furthermore, while I deeply appreciate Mbembe’s utilization of Freud throughout the text, his reading of Hegel seems to be wholly dependent on Kojéve. This is understandable since Kojéve did much to popularize Hegel’s work (particularly The Phenomenology of Spirit) in the 20th century. Yet, Kojéve (and therefore Mbembe) view Hegel as only addressing the speaking subject and its relation to history. This, in effect, cuts the ontological dimensions of Hegel’s thought, thus undermining its truly radical potential (an idea fully fleshed out in Todd McGowan’s Emancipation After Hegel).

Finally, Mbembe’s prescriptive path toward a better society seems a bit weak. I wholeheartedly agree that we need to revive and recenter the virtues of care and concern for our neighbor as we work to decolonize our patterns of thinking, recognizing the shared humanity of all peoples. Of course, we need to cultivate care for the Other; this is fairly obvious but frustratingly vague and toothless. In terms of novelty, there doesn’t seem to be very much new or highly innovative in this work, but rather serves as a repackaging and slight expansion of previous thought. 

Mbembe calls for a global expansion of democracy while also lamenting the nocturnal, violent roots at the foundation of democratic orders. So, should we expand democracy, even if its core has roots in colonialism and slavery? What about these violent, colonial aspects that exist in non-democratic societies? These questions are never really reconciled, and it seems that there is often a conflation of terms throughout the book (liberalism, democracy, etc). 

This also ignores the notion that democracy, rather than naming an existing reality, is a signifier that gestures toward a promise. It is a signifier of the Real that disrupts the Symbolic order; it is an ideal toward which we continually grasp. The failure to achieve it is indicative of the contradiction inherent within it, and it is only in our continual failure to realize democracy that we get glimpses of the deeper and more intractable antagonisms of life. The need for scapegoats and an externalized Other for the sake of self-legitimacy is not only a feature of liberal democracy but also of totalitarianism and authoritarian regimes. All ideologies need a fetish object that covers over the deeper antagonisms that haunt them. By wrestling with these core contradictions and exposing the cracks within these ideologies, regardless of whether found in democracies or dictatorships, we can uncover something truly novel. 

Conclusion: 

Overall, Necropolitics is an illuminating, if dense, exploration of Western modernity and how it remains haunted by its legacies of colonialism and slavery. Following in the footsteps of Michel Foucault, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Frantz Fanon, Mbembe deftly explores the “double consciousness” of the marginalized and dispossessed, as well as how we can move beyond our obsession with difference to create a form of universal humanism. While it falls short in some aspects and is relatively difficult for non-specialists, Necropolitics serves as a valuable contribution to the work of anti-racism. Mbembe’s work will continue to challenge and trouble our comfortable categories of liberalism and democracy, and how we must face our legacies of oppression and violence to change our current world increasingly defined by polarization, hyper-capitalism, exclusion, and intolerance toward the Other.