Necropolitics Covered

54

Covering abstracts and excerpts of academic pieces on necropolitics from all over the world. necropolitics.substack.com

  1. 9h ago

    Coloniality and perspectivism in psychology: from damnation to ecosophical care relations

    Souza Prado, G. A. (2020) ‘Coloniality and perspectivism in psychology: from damnation to ecosophical care relations’, International Review of Psychiatry, 32(4), pp. 320–326. doi: 10.1080/09540261.2020.1765747. Abstract: Inspired by Amerindian peoples’ philosophy, this article aims to problematise the modern philosophical anthropology that underlies psychology as a social practice, and to use the Amerindian perspectivist philosophy proposed by Viveiros de Castro as a critique of Western values. Thus, we approach some of coloniality’s epistemological implications in the institution of subject-object and nature-culture separations that grounds psychology. On the one hand, there is a totalising unification, which operates alongside a transcendental subject that subjugates its object. Beginning from nature’s homogeneity, the differentiation and hierarchy of each being depends on its representations or its soul, expressed as a people’s culture or as an individual psychology. This spiritual-representational aspect is the very foundation of the colonialism and racism of damnation, and their purpose in perpetuating the miserable ways of life of those considered to be scum. On the other hand, in Amerindian cosmogony, humanity is a pronominal mode, a non-exclusive perspectivist position of mankind, built in each context of relations. It is based on this idea that we posit other bases and a new agenda for psychology as a social practice which can enable us to broaden our ways of living towards ecosophical care, as a way of resistance to coloniality. 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

    Coloniality and perspectivism in psychology: from damnation to ecosophical care relations

  2. 2d ago

    The Biopoliticization of Humanitarianism: From Saving Bare Life to Securing the Biohuman in Post-Interventionary Societies

    Reid, J. (2010) ‘The Biopoliticization of Humanitarianism: From Saving Bare Life to Securing the Biohuman in Post-Interventionary Societies’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 4(4), pp. 391–411. doi: 10.1080/17502971003700985. Abstract: This article develops an analysis of a partial, albeit I argue very powerful, strand of contemporary humanitarianism. In analyzing an interdisciplinary literature combining theoretical and practice-based perspectives on humanitarianism, I trace the development of a shift in interest from classical humanitarian concerns for the saving of bare life of humanity to the securing of the biohuman. In the development of humanitarianism post-1989, concepts and theories of adaptation, deriving heavily from innovations in the life sciences, are being applied to determine why some societies are supposedly more prone to humanitarian disasters than others in the form of ‘adaptive failures’: how such societies can avert disasters from occurring in the forms of ‘adaptive responses’, as well as how they can recover from them when they do occur by learning ‘adaptive behaviors’. Theories of adaptation and other concepts relating to the evolutionary powers of the biohuman such as ‘information exchange’ and ‘resilience’ are also being applied to conceive the frameworks in which responses to disasters can best be organized. Within the domains and practices of humanitarianism a biologized conception of the human conceived in terms of evolutionary capacities and properties, and the idea of being able to deliver humanity from its various forms of insecurity through its promotion, has taken hold. The humanitarian emergency, as this article details, is today conceived as the primary locale for the transformation of ungovernable peoples into governable populations. Emergencies represent sites of global danger and disorder vested with renewed political significance because they occur where life is said not only to have failed to perform its adaptive functions in securing itself, but where the very failure of life to adapt is construed as a threat to the security of world order. Thus the failure of maladapted populations is said to threaten not only themselves, but the biopolitical foundations of global governance since their suffering produces economic dislocation as well potentially of political violence. Thus they become subject to the strategies of intervention through which global governance seeks to make populations more fit for liberal rule. 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

    The Biopoliticization of Humanitarianism: From Saving Bare Life to Securing the Biohuman in Post-Interventionary Societies

  3. 4d ago

    Racism, white supremacy and Roberto Esposito’s biopolitics through the lens of Black affect studies: Implications for an affirmative educational biopolitics

    Zembylas, M. (2024) ‘Racism, white supremacy and Roberto Esposito’s biopolitics through the lens of Black affect studies: Implications for an affirmative educational biopolitics’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 56(4), pp. 358–370. doi: 10.1080/00131857.2023.2229552. Abstract: The objective of this article is to engage in a critical review of Roberto Esposito’s biopolitical account by including a thoroughgoing interrogation of racism and white supremacy through the lens of Black affect studies. It is argued that both white supremacy studies and Esposito’s framework could work side-by-side in ways that are productive for affirmative educational biopolitics. In particular, the analysis highlights two insights: first, engagement with white supremacy as a biopolitical category—in particular, white supremacy as an affective embodiment—is essential for the ability of education to interrogate the racialization of Black bodies; and, second, attentiveness to Black affect in biopolitical accounts is crucial for the decentering of white supremacy in education. These insights broaden the conceptual parameters of educational biopolitics by foregrounding the affective biopower of racism and white supremacy as central to affirmative educational biopolitics. 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

    Racism, white supremacy and Roberto Esposito’s biopolitics through the lens of Black affect studies: Implications for an affirmative educational biopolitics

  4. 6d ago

    The Reckoning of Possibles: Asylum Seekers, Justice and the Indigenisation of the Levinasian Third

    Pugliese, J. (2011) ‘The Reckoning of Possibles: Asylum Seekers, Justice and the Indigenisation of the Levinasian Third’, Australian Feminist Law Journal, 34(1), pp. 23–42. doi: 10.1080/13200968.2011.10854451. Abstract: In this essay, I focus on the death of an asylum seeker, Josefa Rauluni, at Villawood immigration detention centre, in order to address a series of critical questions concerning ethics, justice and non-negotiable responsibility. I contextualise this constellation of questions within a Levinasian framework of ethics as a first philosophy in order to suggest what needs to be done. I conclude the essay by transposing Levinas’ concept of the third, as the arbiter of justice that transcends the limitations of the self-other relation, to an Australian context preoccupied with the topics of refugees, hospitality, justice, ongoing colonial relations of power and Aboriginal sovereignty 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

    The Reckoning of Possibles: Asylum Seekers, Justice and the Indigenisation of the Levinasian Third

  5. Jul 26

    Grief Activism and Solidarity with Migrants Along the EU’s Eastern Migratory Route

    Kekstaite, J. and Vukotić, V. (2025) ‘Grief Activism and Solidarity with Migrants Along the EU’s Eastern Migratory Route’, Geopolitics, pp. 1–25. doi: 10.1080/14650045.2025.2562293. Abstract: The EU’s external border restricts the movement of unwanted individuals and subjects them to necropolitical governance. Such governance is sustained by epistemic and affective borders, determining whose lives and deaths are deemed meaningful. Maurice Stierl has proposed the concept of ‘grief activism’ as a form of transformative politics that can subvert such borders. In this paper, we further develop this framework in the specific context of Eastern EUrope, using Lithuania as a case in point. This research explores how the Lithuanian grassroots initiative Sienos Grupė (English: Border Group) engages with the lives and deaths of illegalised migrants and their relatives, invisibilised by the border regime. While research on grief activism has tended to focus on commemorations of migrant deaths, we argue that its scope should be expanded to engage with the entire ‘live-death continuum’ – including the ongoing erosion of conditions for a liveable life in an unequal world. This broader framing provides tools to situate violence against migrants historically and relationally, while seeking to foster alternative directions of affect and political engagement. Drawing on engaged ethnographic fieldwork (2022–2024), semi-structured interviews with members of Sienos Grupė, and an analysis of the group’s public communication, we examine how activists seek recognition for those excluded from dominant regimes of grievability. 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

    Grief Activism and Solidarity with Migrants Along the EU’s Eastern Migratory Route

  6. Jul 24

    Producing Elite Indigenous Masculinities

    Hokowhitu, B. (2012) ‘Producing Elite Indigenous Masculinities’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2(2), pp. 23–48. doi: 10.1080/2201473X.2012.10648840. Excerpt: This article asserts that elite indigenous tribal masculinity is a particular type of masculinity that has developed since colonisation, in part at least, mimicking dominant forms of invader/settler masculinity. While most commentators have outlined that the dominant forms of invader/settler masculinities were held to be inversely related to the mind of indigenous men, the productive nature of power imposed a different set of rules that challenged this dialectic so that aspects of invader/settler masculinity were necessarily imbibed into burgeoning post-contact indigenous masculine leaders. This masculinity has since been allocated disciplinary and authoritative power through notions of tradition and authenticity. Further, indigenous masculinity was often asserted as reflecting the collective will for liberation; in reality, elite indigenous masculinities have habitually served to exclude alternative forms of indigenous masculinity and indigenous women from leadership roles. Via a post-hegemonic analysis of indigenous masculinity, this article appraises the Janus-faced and ambivalent figure of the indigenous heterosexual patriarch; both oppressor and oppressed. The dialectics between hetero-patriarchal masculinity and feminism, and colonised/coloniser become complicated, as indigenous masculinities are both imbibed with privilege and denied it; both performing colonial hetero-patriarchy and resistant to it. 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

    Producing Elite Indigenous Masculinities

  7. Jul 22

    Ya Falastin: Networks of Resistance Against the Economy of Genocide

    Kočović De Santo, M. (2026) ‘Ya Falastin: Networks of Resistance Against the Economy of Genocide’, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 37(1), pp. 108–132. doi: 10.1080/10455752.2025.2607978. Abstract: This work offers a radical ecological reading of Palestine as a more-than-human subject. What pedagogies emerge when we listen to olive roots, children's voices, poets addressing land as sentient witness? Using the Tree of Life and Death as a methodological metaphor, I trace how pluriversal relational pedagogies form counter-metabolism against capitalism's parasitic logic. The Tree framework structures analysis: roots hold pre-monotheistic ontologies where earth and body remain inseparable; branches express steadfastness, care, and reciprocity; mycorrhizal networks sustain life while sharing soil with Armillaria – capitalism feeding on death. I map three necro-economic patterns: epistemicide (killing the word “genocide”), economy of genocide ($225 billion through arms/tech/finance), and ecocide (one million olive trees as temporal annihilation). Palestinian voices persist as epistemologies. When poets address “Ya Falastin,” land becomes a listening subject – trees witness, roots remember, soil responds – these are not testimonies but theory. Counter-hegemonic processes that allow the forest of life to survive depend on unlearning growth ideology and cultivating global solidarities rooted in collective refusal. 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

    Ya Falastin: Networks of Resistance Against the Economy of Genocide

  8. Jul 20

    Diaspora, Digital Media, and Death Counts: Eritreans and the Politics of Memorialisation

    Bernal, V. (2013) ‘Diaspora, Digital Media, and Death Counts: Eritreans and the Politics of Memorialisation’, African Studies, 72(2), pp. 246–264. doi: 10.1080/00020184.2013.812875. Abstract: This article analyses a war memorial established on a website by Eritreans in diaspora as an example of how diasporas are transforming the ways national politics are conducted and understood. Establishing a war memorial is normally the prerogative and responsibility of the state. In performing this task the Eritrean diaspora makes visible the failure of the state to make public important national information and to hold itself accountable to the Eritrean people. The establishment of the memorial online by the diaspora, furthermore, works to de-centre the state, symbolically at least, as the embodiment of the nation and creates an opening for alternative visions of the nation and state-citizen relations. The Internet is making possible innovative forms of diaspora political engagement and activism that challenge conventional relations of citizenship and sovereignty. 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

    Diaspora, Digital Media, and Death Counts: Eritreans and the Politics of Memorialisation
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Covering abstracts and excerpts of academic pieces on necropolitics from all over the world. necropolitics.substack.com

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