Necropolitics

In his closing, Mbembe draws together his theory of necropolitics as both a reaction to Foucault’s biopower and an opposition to the ideologies that form the foundation of democracy as a moral good. He presents necropolitics as the antisocial contract that aligns liberal democracy with humanism. Mbembe proposes that the mythology of humanism, the notion that individual freedom and autonomy is the purpose of life, is based on a colonialist attitude that minimizes the Other. Humanism developed on the idea that some lives have more value than others and that the grand narrative of the hero and the Other can affirm the dual oppression and elevation of two groups of people. He argues that the social contract does not provide security for everyone. Instead, it maximizes security, placing the desires and fears of a specific group above collective care.

While Foucault’s theory of biopower focuses on life (how governments enact control over life’s processes and data), Mbembe’s thesis centers on death. Necropolitics concedes that sovereign states use life in their quest for domination, but Mbembe views this use of life as one side of a duality. The other side is death—more specifically, “deathworlds.” Mbembe’s use of Foucault’s genealogical technique shows his creative approach and emphasis on diverging from Western tradition. Instead of focusing solely on the past, Mbembe closes his thesis by exploring how his ideas relate to the future. He presents an uncertain view of the future, but he does not veer away from hope. One of his most striking warnings about the future is that global repopulation and technology will alter the shapes of self-identity: “As the march progresses, these countries also become unfamiliar to us, and now we occasionally glimpse them silhouetted” (185).

Mbembe’s critique of humanism is a reaction to the ideologies that formed the basis of American democracy: the work of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes on the social contract and the state of nature. This evaluation forms the heart of Mbembe’s thematic exploration of Democracy as Medicine and Poison. Locke and Hobbes developed a romantic view of individualism and the social contract because they benefited from the advantages of colonialism’s favor. Mbembe explains that their inability to recognize the impact of colonialism on their own philosophy contributed to the development of ideologies that continued to marginalize those identified as the Other. Fanon’s work supports this argument by showing the immense psychological impact of persistent racism and colonial violence.

In Chapter 6, Mbembe offers the symbol of the body of the enslaved person as a challenging and stark image of colonialism’s violence. The plantation represents both the historical trajectory of the politics underlying the allotment of physical space, thematically supporting The Politics of Space, and the beginning of new manifestations of power. Mbembe shows how plantation slavery was the culmination of the hidden forms of racism and punishment, such as those that Foucault’s work explored, that became more popular in the modern era. Slavery provided new technologies for hiding the truth of states of exclusion from the general population. Despite their new strategies of enactment, Mbembe argues that modern governments rely on the same old technique. American slavery and modern forms of third spaces offer places to wield power with impunity.

Mbembe warns readers to look closely at the wealthy elite, which he argues offers a far more detrimental and immediate threat to democracy than revolution. The questions he lists in the conclusion hint at an uncertain future beyond colonialism and democracy in which humans dare to ask what the world might look like if people eliminated the concept of the Other altogether. In his closing, the prayer he offers reiterates an important idea: the importance of questioning everything. The questions in the conclusion mirror Mbembe’s continued use of questions to illustrate, explore, and dismantle. His prayer reinforces the value he places on inquiry. In all three themes, Mbembe offers an echo of hope through questioning. He poses different possibilities and avenues to explore depending on the work, persistence, and critical reflection of collective groups of people.