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2 Apr

Necropolitics of Achille Mbembe: An Extended Essay on the Book

Gržinić, M. (2022). Necropolitics of Achillo Mbembe: An Extended Essay on the Book. Philosophical Vestnik, 42(1). https://doi.org/10.3986/fv.42.1.10 (Original work published 31 December 2021). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com

2 Apr

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2 min
7 Apr

Intention setting & strategy for my digital goals

Final round of the two truths game about what improvements I can make to support my digital goals, plus some meta-commentary on what this podcast even is. Spoiler: it's not educational, it's just me complaining and asking questions I don't have answers to. Setting intentions I probably won’t follow through on Hey, welcome back. We are on a three-part bender here. If you’re new, you have tuned into Liv versus the Surveillance State. In this podcast I talk about my experiences within the modern technological era and how bloody convenience and connection costs us. It often demands a payment of our psychological health and, dare I say, integrity. And today before we begin, let us say grace since we’re starting a new tradition here. Because I complain so much, I have to say one nice thing before I start complaining. I have to say at least one thing I’m grateful for. Today’s grace So today I think I’m going to say I’m grateful for very accessible podcast equipment. I would even say maybe too accessible.—I feel like every man (every straight man) needs a license to purchase podcasting gear the way we do with guns and firearms. If we need a license to buy guns, we need men to register and license for podcasting. Yeah okay, I’m just going to leave that there because that is a topic for another day.—So I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for the chance to just sit here and talk to the world, talk out into the void, and upload what I say on the internet and then people just have access to it when they want to listen. Or even if they don’t want to listen, it is still there. I could upload this on the internet and no one could listen to it and that’s all right. Someday someone’s just going to find this on here maybe hundreds of years from now. But that’s cool. I just need to do this right now for my mental health. Alright, let’s get into it. I’m going to try to get through this episode real quick because I just feel like I ramble on, don’t I? Final round of two truths and a lie So for the third and final instalment of the two truths and a lie game we’ve been playing for the last couple of episodes, I am going to finally be answering the last question of the bunch. It is: what improvements can I make to my environment to better support my digital goals? Well, I said originally “better support my goals” but because this podcast is obviously about digital technology, social media, and online stuff, I’ve just kind of reworded it to be digital goals. I did get this journal prompt from a Pinterest journal list infographic. The other two questions that I answered are in the last couple of episodes. So again, if you are new here, please go back and listen right from the very start if you should want to. Otherwise you’re going to be wondering what the hell I’m talking about. Okay, so what improvements can I make to my environment to better support my digital goals? I guess before I answer this question, I want to acknowledge that within my immediate environment (as in the environment that I have direct control over) I already have everything I need to achieve my digital goals. My goals of either getting things ticked off my to-do list or just minimising reliance on stuff. So yeah, I have all the tools and resources I need right now and I should not want for more. If anything, I think that half the hurdle for me is just the mental work to just go and do it. And the other half of the hurdle would be the social and cyber structures that we are bound to, that we are limited to operate within. So perhaps I could think of answers to this question that are more focused on my mental environment, or the way I do things inside the boundaries of that, which would better support my digital goals. And to be cognisant of how privileged I am to have choices for and accessibility to such things, and of my personal limitations. My digital goals, just so we’re clear So to reiterate, my digital goals are to: 1) bloody finish organising my online filing and storage system. 2) minimise my everyday usage and reliance on digital tools such as doomscrolling on socials or YouTube or whatever video apps there are for my oxytocin fix. And 3) do all that while easing back into the world of social media this year. Very slowly. Very mindful. Very demure. Answer one, no socials on phone So I guess my first answer for two truths and a lie would be to continue not having social media on my phone, on my actual mobile phone, and to fight the urge to have it on my mobile device for prolonged periods. This is specifically for my portable gadgets though, that I take with me everywhere. So yeah, the phone that I take with me everywhere just because I have to. And just leave the social scrolling for when I’m on my laptop at home or when I’m sitting down doing something, especially now that I’m planning on getting back on social media in the future. Because I feel like the phone is something that we take with us everywhere and we’ve just gotten used to having that connection at any time we want. And I’ve been doing good, doing okay with beating my phone screen addiction for the last wee while. But I want to be able to maintain that. And I know now the work of maintaining that and the work of fighting the urge to not continuously scroll is just mental discipline honestly. And also just simply eliminating access to the addiction. These days I don’t reach out for my phone in public every 10 seconds. Even when I’m just at home, I often go a couple hours or so and I’m thinking, wait, where’s my phone? Because I’ve made my phone specifically only to be contacted via messaging and phone call. And checking emails and the weather. But there’s no constant stream of back and forth on social media, constantly talking to somebody on it. I think that’s what for me is the thing that has tied me to it before, this constant need of connecting and talking to someone. And also I’ve turned off all notifications a couple of years ago. Literally, even the badges. When I still had social media, I only had badges on when someone has specifically messaged me or tried to call me. And then after that I turned the badges off when someone comments or messages me. So I’ve been working on this a few years now, slowly taking off the need to look at it. And when I upload an app, I immediately turn off all notifications on it except for apps that really need it. For example, Uber, because you’re waiting, you need to know if the driver’s outside. Obviously the apps that you need it for. The ballet story So I don’t reach for my phone every few seconds now because I’ve just worked on the habit of that. I used to have this itch to look at my phone every 10 seconds when I’m just sitting and waiting for something in public, like waiting for my drink in a pub, or even worse when I’m at the movies and I’m itching to scroll my phone so bad while watching. But you’re not supposed to have your phone out in movies, which is great. It’s a great situation to put yourself in if you want to work on your screen addiction because you’re forced to sit in a space where you’re not doing an activity or anything. You’re literally just sitting there in the dark. And normally, if you’re watching a movie at home, you would also be doomscrolling, but you can’t just out of theatre etiquette and being considerate to people around you. I think the last time I felt that way before doing something about it was, I can’t remember, was that 2024 or 2025? During Auckland Arts Festival. Auckland Arts Festival used to invite me to watch a few of the show’s opening nights of my choosing. So they’d be like, choose four shows, we’ll give you tickets to it, and you can have a plus one. One of the shows I went to that year was the ballet, I think it was the Scottish Ballet or something, they came to Auckland and it was for A Streetcar Named Desire, the play but in ballet form. So if you are a patron of the arts, you know that the ballet and the opera and all that, they take ages and you just have an interval in the middle. So I took my friend Amber as my plus one because we both used to do ballet and she used to live in New Orleans, which is where A Streetcar Named Desire was set in. So it was just this cute little girls night out and it just made sense and it was really fun. And anyway, as everyone knows, you can’t have your phone out, especially in ballet. But ballets are just sooooo long and Amber and I, being of the Millennial/Gen Z era (and also at the time I think we were trying to work on quitting vaping) so our attention spans have already eroded by years of screen usage. And we were just sitting there itching to reach for our phones. Not that we weren’t interested in the show because I loved it. I love the ballet and I’m not going to say I love the story of A Streetcar Named Desire because the plotline is kind of effed up. But it’s not like we weren’t enjoying watching it. It’s just by habit we just want to reach for a phone. We’re itching. And we’re working on our nicotine addiction. It was just like-what are we-what is this era? We have this beautiful, beautiful ballet in front of us and all we want to do is do something else. And I just specifically remember that. Surely I felt that way in other situations, but that was one of the last times that I’ve felt that way, because I started thinking, oh my god, I fricking love the ballet. And here I am wanting to do anything else. What has happened to me? And I’ve since worked on this and no longer do I reach for my phone now. I just literally stare out into the open air and look like a creep in these situations, especially in the elevator. I’ll be standing in the elevator and literally seven people are on their phones and I’m just staring out over yonder. And I probably look like such a creep, honestly. So I’ve worked on it, I’ve add

7 Apr

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25 min
4 Apr

A Necropolitical Visual Regime: Banditry in Colombia, 1958–1964

Abstract: From 1958 to 1964 in Colombia, during the first years of the partisan power-sharing agreement known as the National Front, roving crews of gunmen labelled ‘bandits’ who had been mobilised and then abandoned by party elites terrorised local populations in the countryside. We track the gruesome photographic record of that violence: first, as it was produced by bandits who recruited photography in their bids for local sovereignty; second, as it circulated through government and media accounts that turned those same images back on the bandits as part of the military’s hunt for them as outlaws; and third, as a group of scholar-activists used them in academic publications that sought to shock the public into conscious concern and stimulate a sociological discussion about what caused and fuelled the violence. We argue that disparate uses of the same type of images – portraits of bandits and the cadavers, often mutilated, of their victims – constituted a necropolitical visual regime in which the elite consensus between government and press most effectively harnessed the photographs’ affective charge and channelled it into the pacification effort. Alexander L. Fattal & Andrés F. Caicedo Sierra (2023) A Necropolitical Visual Regime: Banditry in Colombia, 1958–1964, History of Photography, 47:4, 368-388, DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2024.2429879 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com

4 Apr

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2 min
10 Apr

The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right Now

Morgensen, S. L. (2011) ‘The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right Now’, Settler Colonial Studies, 1(1), pp. 52–76. doi: 10.1080/2201473X.2011.10648801. Abstract: Settler colonialism is exemplary of the processes of biopower theorised by Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault. However, settler colonialism remains naturalised within theories of biopower and theories of its relation to coloniality. White supremacist settler colonisation produces specific modes of biopolitics that sustain not only in settler states but also in regimes of global governance that inherit, extend, and naturalise their power. I extend Patrick Wolfe’s theory that a ‘logic of elimination’ constitutes settler colonialism in the genocide and amalgamation of Indigenous peoples, by indicating that this also indigenises and naturalises white settler nations as projections of the West. Agamben’s work illuminates how Indigenous peoples are eliminated in a state of exception to Western law, which by functioning to erase consanguinity – as the patriarch in Roman law eliminates the defiant son - explains Indigenous peoples’ seemingly contradictory incorporation within and excision from the body of white settler nations. This biopolitical process specific to settler colonialism also structures the manner in which white settler societies demonstrably universalize Western law, both within their bounds and in global arenas. My call to denaturalise settler colonialism in social theory is but a first step towards broader study of how the biopolitics of settler colonialism structure current modes of biopower and require concerted critique at the intersections of Indigenous and settler colonial studies. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com

10 Apr

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2 min
5 Apr

Saying grace / Saving grace

Starting a new ritual where I say one thing I’m grateful for before complaining about the surveillance state, because I realised I just complain too much. Also talking about Bunnings collecting our biometric data through implied consent and what I’ve been procrastinating on. Round two. Last we left off, we were in the middle of playing two truths and a lie. I took too long giving detailed answers in the first round. The Surveillance State loves data, apparently. I didn’t anticipate how in-depth my answers would be, so the rest of the game had to be continued into this episode. Maybe I can just answer the second round in this episode and the last question topic next time. That’s what we’ll do for episode three. However, on a more pressing note, I realised after last time that so much of what I say sounds like complaining. Actually, let me not sugarcoat that and call myself out on it. I am complaining. It doesn’t ‘sound like’ complaining, it IS complaining. I complain a lot about the state of the modern world right now, especially when it comes to the blurred boundaries between our lives and social media, what’s become normal, the technology and new digital social etiquettes we can’t opt out of, what’s expected and demanded of us digitally. Starting a new ritual because I complain too much So I have decided to start every single one of these episodes by saying one thing that I am grateful for before going on tangents and complaints about the digital world today. Basically, we are going to say grace before we even touch our food. That’s what we’re going to do now. It’s going to be a ritual in every episode. I am naturally a very critical person who’s skeptical of structures and authority. It started when I was a little Catholic school girl and I just hated existing in that realm of having to blindly follow things. I rebelled a lot and questioned everything. Which in part has been good because it’s sharpened my critical thinking skills. But sometimes it makes me lose sight of all the amazing things we do have. I would like to stop taking a lot of things for granted. First world problems, I know. Today’s grace Today I am grateful for the fact that I can just open any one of my devices and be connected to the world. Even though this kind of connection has dissolved and blurred some boundaries in privacy, there is still a lot to be grateful for when it comes to being able to connect with people from across the world. I mean, I just one day decided to turn on my microphone, start talking into it, and broadcast it to the world. Even though no one’s listening right now, I have the freedom and the options and the ability to do all that. It’s nice that we can connect that way. So I’m grateful for that. Okay, grace done. Side note about privacy and biometric data I’m going to leave all the privacy topic things for another episode because it’s overwhelming in my head sometimes. But actually, I just recently saw something, and I don’t know if this is real or not since we never really know if headlines we see online are all true these days. But apparently some people applying for US visas are being forced to put all of their social media accounts on public so immigration can see all of their information, what their life is like, what they post about, what their political standings are. Isn’t that just so weird? Privacy is really such a privilege for some of us, especially for those of us who don’t have the desperation to actively want to live in a developing third-world-country such as the United States of America. Which is so gross. And also another side note. I was also reading up on the Australian Privacy Act 1998 on the definition of privacy consent as either expressed or implied. Expressed consent or implied consent. And how organisations can rely on implied consent when collecting biometric data on you. On us, I guess. For example, if you enter a Bunnings Warehouse, you have then given implied consent for them to collect your biometric data. And you can’t really do anything about it except not go there, even if you need something, even if you need a hammer. Bunnings’ argument is that it’s just impractical to ask every single patron to give consent every time they come in and use their services. So they are permitted to use regular behaviour such as entering premises as consent for our biometric data to be taken, stored, analysed, and used however they want. “It’s now the default that by entering the public realm anything and everything about us is fair game — and we enable it too.” And yeah, I guess that’s probably going to be every establishment’s argument though. It is really impressive. Can you imagine every single person walking into any Westfield Mall, and being asked to sign a consent form first before they walk in? So that’s their argument there. But isn’t that just weird? It’s just a little something that’s been on my mind for the last couple of years. How it’s now the default that when we exit our private homes, as soon as we step out of that door, anything and everything about us is fair game by entering the public realm. And we enable it too by putting Ring cameras on our front doors, dashcams in our cars—Okay wait, I’m going on. I feel like this can be a topic for another episode because I can just go into this. But yeah, see, I’m just complaining. Complaining, complaining, complaining about all these systems in place these days that erode our rights to privacy. So back to the topic at hand. Stop complaining. Round two of two truths and a lie Alright, getting back to the second round of two truths and a lie today. The question topic was: what have I been putting off doing out of procrastination, fear, or overwhelm that could elevate my life? This question I found on a journal ideas infographic thing on Pinterest. Answer one, Microsoft exodus So two truths and a lie. My first answer, okay this is an easy one because I already touched on this last episode within one of my truth answers. But it would have to be that I really need to get to doing my storage transfer out of OneDrive (Microsoft OneDrive) so that I can get out of the Microsoft ecosystem for personal use. And I do this out of all three: procrastination, fear, and overwhelm. Procrastination because I have gotten used to intentionally avoiding stress lately and I know from experience it is stressful and tedious to do full-on drive transfers. Fear because drive transfers in the past have cost me losing so much of my old videos and photos and files and I’m scared that it’s going to happen again this time around. Overwhelmed because I know it’s going to be a huge job that may take weeks if not months if not a year. Just thinking of all the admin of it is giving me the anxiety tummy. But I do need to spring clean my digital accounts and organise it all into better systems. So I need to get into that sometime soon. Answer two, account clean-ups Answer number two would be deleting old accounts on websites I don’t even use anymore. So I have managed to keep track of most of my accounts that I’ve opened on websites here and there for the last few years. I used Dashlane to do all of that. Looking through all of these accounts that I have from one-off food ordering apps and appointment booking websites and free services of software websites that just want your email so that you can get a free PDF conversion or something. Things like that. Random websites that just want your email so that they can sell your email off to data farming companies, I guess. I have a lot of that. Because since I kept track of it on Dashlane, I have so much of it. And it’s just a lot of random shit. And it’s a lot of my info out there. So in the last few months, I’ve been logging back onto all of the ones I don’t use anymore and have been deleting my accounts with them manually. So I log on (extra steps if my logons don’t work), I literally have to go to the settings, press delete account (extra steps if there’s no simple button for it and have to contact customer service). I have to do that in each and every single one. And annoyingly for some of them, when you attempt to delete an account and even email customer service to delete your account and information, because some of them you can’t just delete that yourself, you have to actively contact customer service, anyway, for some of them, even if you do that, they don’t even delete your account. Even when you’ve confirmed it and you’ve asked them to do it. And in fact, they actually double down on sending you more promotional emails. I think it’s Etihad Airlines, I did that. And then someone from their customer service said, yes, can you confirm you want to do this? And I’m like, yeah, please delete it. And then I get another email saying, thank you for signing up to our newsletter. And I was like, what the... I didn’t do that. I specifically did not want to be part of this. And then now they’ve just completely spammed my Microsoft email. And luckily I don’t use my Microsoft email anymore. But I think they’re just doing that to be dicks about it, aren’t they? Like I had correspondence with them. And there’s a lot of places that say that you have to email them to delete an account and then they don’t even reply to that. So they just keep your information, I guess, forever and ever. So I’m still in the middle of doing those manually and I need to get them done in the next few months. I’m just putting them off. Answer three, eBooks And the last answer, answer number three, is that I need to organise all of my e-books on my Kindle. I have successfully given away and donated a lot of my old books before we moved overseas from New Zealand to Australia. And I was just not going to take all of my books with me. So I just kept some that I either couldn’t sell, nobody wanted to keep, or

5 Apr

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22 min
21 May

The politics of waste management

Episode 9 — The Waste Management Business Show notes The story in this episode is composite, drawn from real events. Identifying details are changed. Real-world events the story draws on, full citations, and further reading are below. REAL-WORLD EVENTS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE Australia - The Australian recycling crisis that arrived in early 2018 following China's National Sword policy, with council kerbside recycling cost increases of several hundred per cent and multiple public reports of collected kerbside material being sent to landfill while still being marketed as recycling. - The collapse of SKM Recycling in Victoria. The company stopped receiving recyclables from 33 Victorian councils in July 2019 and was placed in receivership in August 2019, owing approximately A$100 million. Cleanaway acquired five of the SKM sites in October 2019 for A$66 million, reopening material recovery facilities at Coolaroo, Hallam, Geelong, Laverton North (Victoria) and Derwent Park (Tasmania) through late 2019. - The South Australian Container Deposit Scheme, commenced under the Beverage Container Act 1975 (SA) and in full effect from 1977, making South Australia the first jurisdiction in the world to operate a comprehensive container deposit scheme. - State landfill levies progressively introduced and increased across Australian states from the late 1990s onward, shifting the economics of waste management toward diversion. - The Recycling and Waste Reduction Act 2020 (Cth) and the COAG National Waste Policy Action Plan 2019, beginning the phase-out of unprocessed waste exports: glass from 1 January 2021, mixed plastics from 1 July 2021, whole used tyres from 1 December 2021, single resin plastics from 1 July 2022, and mixed paper and cardboard from 1 July 2024. - The ABC's War on Waste documentary series, first broadcast May 2017, which immediately preceded the National Sword crisis and shifted Australian public conversation on waste. China - China's National Sword policy, with a WTO notification of 18 July 2017 announcing the import ban on 24 categories of solid waste effective 1 January 2018, and a 0.5% contamination threshold for non-banned recyclables effective 1 March 2018. - China had been the destination for approximately 45-50% of the world's exported recyclable plastic and paper waste from the early 1990s through to the National Sword policy. Ghana - The Agbogbloshie scrapyard in central Accra, occupying approximately 20 acres at the mouth of the Odaw River, draining into Korle Lagoon. Estimates of workers on-site before the 2021 demolition range from approximately 6,000 to 10,000, predominantly migrants from northern Ghana, with electronic waste accumulating at the site from the late 1990s onward from the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and other wealthy economies. - The demolition of Agbogbloshie on 1 July 2021 by the Greater Accra Regional Coordinating Council, with armed police and military backing, under the "Let's Make Accra Work" initiative led by then-Greater Accra Regional Minister Henry Quartey. - The Greater Accra Scrap Dealers Association, which organised after the demolition and pooled resources to purchase land at Teacher Mante, approximately 60-75 km north of Accra, in an effort to relocate informal e-waste activities to a sanctioned site. - The scholarly critique of the international "world's largest e-waste dump" framing of Agbogbloshie, led by Ghanaian and diaspora researchers including Grace Akese, Muntaka Chasant, and Uli Beisel, arguing that the framing was empirically overstated and politically used to legitimise state violence against informal waste workers. International - The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal (1989, in force 1992), the Basel Ban Amendment (in force 5 December 2019) prohibiting hazardous waste exports from OECD to non-OECD countries, and the 2019 plastic waste amendments (in force 1 January 2021) bringing most contaminated and mixed plastic waste under prior informed consent procedures. - The Global Alliance of Waste Pickers, founded 2008, coordinating organisations across Latin America, Asia, and Africa. - South-East Asian waste import restrictions through 2019-2020 following the Chinese ban, with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam returning contaminated containers to wealthy-economy points of origin including Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Hong Kong. REFERENCES [1] World Trade Organization, Notification by China to the Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade, document G/TBT/N/CHN/1211, 18 July 2017. https://docs.wto.org/dol2fe/Pages/SS/directdoc.aspx?filename=q:/G/TBTN17/CHN1211.pdf; Patrick Sangster, "From Green Fence to red alert: A China timeline," Resource Recycling, 13 February 2018, https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2018/02/13/green-fence-red-alert-china-timeline/; Yifan Gu et al., "Impact of China's National Sword Policy on the U.S. Landfill and Plastics Recycling Industry," Sustainability 14(4) (2022): 2456. [2] Amy L. Brooks, Shunli Wang, and Jenna R. Jambeck, "The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade," Science Advances 4(6) (2018): eaat0131; Katherine Earley, "Piling Up: How China's Ban on Importing Waste Has Stalled Global Recycling," Yale Environment 360, 7 March 2019, https://e360.yale.edu/features/piling-up-how-chinas-ban-on-importing-waste-has-stalled-global-recycling. [3] Senate Environment and Communications References Committee, Never Waste a Crisis: The Waste and Recycling Industry in Australia (Commonwealth of Australia, June 2018); ABC News, "Recycling going to landfill after China bans Australian waste," 21 April 2018, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-21/recycling-going-to-landfill-after-china-ban-on-australian-waste/9682386; Joe Pickin et al., National Waste Report 2020, Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment; Victorian Auditor-General's Office, Recovering and Reprocessing Resources from Waste (2020); Inside Waste, "Former SKM facilities in Victoria reopened by Cleanaway," February 2020, https://www.insidewaste.com.au/former-skm-facilities-in-victoria-reopened-by-cleanaway/. [4] Max Liboiron, Pollution Is Colonialism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021), https://www.dukeupress.edu/pollution-is-colonialism; Max Liboiron, Manuel Tironi and Nerea Calvillo, "Toxic Politics: Acting in a Permanently Polluted World," Social Studies of Science 48(3) (2018): 331-349; Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), https://civiclaboratory.nl/. [5] Grace Akese, Uli Beisel and Muntaka Chasant, "Agbogbloshie: A Year after the Violent Demolition," African Arguments, 22 July 2022, https://africanarguments.org/2022/07/agbogbloshie-a-year-after-the-violent-demolition/; Peter C. Little, Burning Matters: Life, Labor, and E-Waste Pyropolitics in Ghana (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021); Peter C. Little and Grace A. Akese, "Centering the Korle Lagoon: Exploring Blue Political Ecologies of E-Waste in Ghana," Journal of Political Ecology 26(1) (2019): 448-465. [6] Akese, Beisel and Chasant, "Agbogbloshie: A Year after the Violent Demolition" (above); Muntaka Chasant, "Agbogbloshie Demolition: The End of An Era or An Injustice?," Muntaka.com (independent investigative research and photography), https://muntaka.com/agbogbloshie-demolition/; Electrònica Justa, "Crisis in Agbogbloshie, Ghana, caused by forced dismantlement of the landfill," July 2021, https://electronicajusta.net/crisis-in-agbogbloshie-ghana-caused-by-forced-dismantlement-of-the-landfill/?lang=en. [7] Grace A. Akese, "Electronic Waste (e-waste) Science and Advocacy at Agbogbloshie: The Making and Effects of 'The World's Largest E-Waste Dump'" (PhD Dissertation, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2019); Josh Lepawsky, Reassembling Rubbish: Worlding Electronic Waste (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018); Augustus Sarpong, Dorothy M. M. Owusu and Esther O. Onallia, "Academic urban legend, Agbogbloshie: Sweeping away the 'World's Largest E-Waste Dumpsite'," Geoforum 159 (2024): 104180. [8] Gay Hawkins, The Ethics of Waste: How We Relate to Rubbish (Sydney: UNSW Press; Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); Gay Hawkins, Emily Potter and Kane Race, Plastic Water: The Social and Material Life of Bottled Water (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015). [9] Global Alliance of Waste Pickers, https://globalrec.org/about-us/; Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), Waste Pickers Programme, https://www.wiego.org/informal-economy/occupational-groups/waste-pickers; Melanie Samson, ed., Refusing to Be Cast Aside: Waste Pickers Organising Around the World (Cambridge, MA: WIEGO, 2009); Sonia Maria Dias, "Waste Pickers and Cities," Environment and Urbanization 28(2) (2016): 375-390. [10] Government of South Australia, Green Industries SA, Container Deposit Scheme background and history, https://www.greenindustries.sa.gov.au/container-deposit-scheme; Beverage Container Act 1975 (SA), consolidated under the Environment Protection Act 1993 (SA) Part 8 Division 2; Productivity Commission, Waste Management Inquiry Report, chapter 6 on extended producer responsibility (2006), https://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/waste/report. [11] Recycling and Waste Reduction Act 2020 (Cth), https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2020A00119/latest/text; Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, "Australia's waste export ban," https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/protection/waste/exports/waste-export-ban; Council of Australian Governments, National Waste Policy Action Plan 2019, https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/protection/waste/publications/national-waste-policy-action-plan; state EPA landfill levy histories across NSW EPA, EPA Victoria, Green Industries SA, WA Department of Water and Environmental Regulation, and the Queensland Department of Environment. [12] Waste Managem

21 May

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10 min
12 Apr

Necropolitical complicities: (re)constructing a normative somatechnics of Iraq

Citation: Osuri, G. (2009) ‘Necropolitical complicities: (re)constructing a normative somatechnics of Iraq’, Social Semiotics, 19(1), pp. 31–45. doi: 10.1080/10350330802632766. Abstract: This article theorizes the concept of necropolitical complicities in the construction and writing of ethno-sectarian identities in the context of the war in Iraq. Drawing on Mbembe's concept of necropolitics in relation to the (re)construction of a normative somatechnics, the article argues for an acknowledgment of operative colonial epistemologies and techniques of governance that have fuelled contemporary sectarian violence in Iraq. The interplay between these epistemologies and techniques of governance and the violent assertions of Iraqi ethno-religious identities are theorized as necropolitical complicities. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com

12 Apr

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1 min
15 Apr

Itinerant deathworlds: Spanish border externalisation and the necroborder

Lopez Oggier, F. (2026). Itinerant deathworlds: Spanish border externalisation and the necroborder. Territory, Politics, Governance, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2025.2594500 Abstract: In 2006 Spain spearheaded European border externalisation, re-spatialising its border into a peripatetic political institution to systematically intercept ‘irregular’ migrants. This paper conducts a necropolitical analysis of Spain’s border externalisation projects by reviewing migrant mortality/disappearance data and conducting a discourse analysis of first-hand migrant accounts with the dislocated bordering apparatus. I posit that Spain’s border externalisation efforts create ‘itinerant deathworlds’: a dislocated form of necropower that follows migrants while they are in transit. Post-mortem violence and psychic trauma cause itinerant deathworlds to linger long after migration journeys have ended, projecting them into indeterminate spatio-temporal scales. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com

15 Apr

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1 min
5 days ago

Youth as Death

Neely, A. H. (2024) ‘Youth as Death’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 114(10), pp. 2281–2296. doi: 10.1080/24694452.2024.2374922. Abstract: Since the end of apartheid, life in South Africa has been marked by an epidemic of death among the youth—people between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five. First as a result of HIV/AIDS and political violence, and more recently as a result of “these diseases,” a broad group of illnesses that affect the youth, homicide and suicide, this epidemic is in part a consequence of ongoing processes of settler colonialism and racial capitalism in South Africa. This epidemic of death can also be understood as an example of necropolitics—the failure of the postapartheid state. At the same time, as the stories in this article reveal, no one or two analytical approach(es) can fully make sense of what it means to live in a place where the youth are dying at such a high rate. Drawing inspiration from work in Black studies, and Black feminisms more specifically, and driven by the stories of those living through loss in South Africa, this article sketches what it means to live in a place where youth is defined by death. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com

5 days ago

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1 min
6 days ago

‘We Want Them Alive!’: The Politics and Culture of Human Rights

Fregoso, R. L. (2006) ‘‘We Want Them Alive!’: The Politics and Culture of Human Rights’, Social Identities, 12(2), pp. 109–138. doi: 10.1080/13504630600583296. Abstract: In this essay I argue that a new order of power is emerging on the US-Mexico borderlands. This order of power is necropolitical. I then analyse feminicides on the borderlands in relation to this emerging order of power. Drawing upon theories of sovereignty, I argue that the consolidation of a necropolitical order in the region is a result of the convergence and intersection of multiple forces and processes, including militarization, denationalization, neoliberalism and ingovernability. Secondly, I examine the countervailing forces to this emerging order of power, especially the turn to a politics of human rights by grassroots and transnational collectivities. Finally, my essay probes the role of culture in shaping new understandings of human rights and re-imagining new democratic possibilities and subjectivities. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com

6 days ago

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1 min

Welcome to Channel 54. My name is Liv and I make podcasts with a side of politics.

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Necropolitics of Achille Mbembe: An Extended Essay on the Book

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Necropolitical complicities: (re)constructing a normative somatechnics of Iraq

Itinerant deathworlds: Spanish border externalisation and the necroborder

Youth as Death

‘We Want Them Alive!’: The Politics and Culture of Human Rights

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