Necropolitics by Achille Mbembe takes us back to his seminal text on “Necropolitics” translated and published in the US in 2003. At this point, 40 years after Foucault’s Biopolitics, Mbembe was re-theorizing biopolitics through a necro horizon, which turned out to be a robust conceptual shift from Western thought. Not much else is explicitly said about necropolitics in the titular book, which comes 17 years after the seminal text that had a significant impact on the theory and practice of philosophy, (...) politics, anthropology, and esthetics. Mbembe presents the layers of forms, modes, and procedures of the necropolitical working through contemporary neoliberal global societies. It is therefore not surprising that Mbembe makes reference to theory in forms, form is the way to redefine or rephrase content, and “who should live and who must die” is currently the beginning. But how this is done in the 21st century, what are the methods and procedures to implement this central act in neoliberal global democracy —that is the task of this book. (shrink)

This article examines colonialism, the regime of whiteness, and feminism; it sketches possible genealogies of theories and practices in order to design an aesthetic of radicality or a radical aesthetic that is insurgent and defiant, based on histories and knowledge. We know that aesthetics is a colonial formation that historically and currently privileges the white European bourgeois who could speculate on the beautiful and the good, while genocidal practices and slave trade were carried out from European soil in other parts (...) of the world. Similarly, the Shoah, the still unthinkable genocide that happened on European soil in the twentieth century and shaped the European present, is still, at its base, covered by rhetorically empty constructions of aesthetic perception, practices, and theories. A radical aesthetics must realign all these categories, not only with a cynical gesture of inversion but to situate them categorically and ethically elsewhere. (shrink)

The article contributes to the understanding of how societal conflict, aggression, and racism are intertwined with the concepts of the body and necropolitics. Achille Mbembe’s exploration of historical conflicts refers to the way in which states and other necropolitical entities exert control over life and death. Persistent conflicts reflect a form of necropolitics in which certain groups are subjected to violence and death as a means of maintaining power. Frank B. Wilderson III’s analysis of aggression towards Black individuals reveals how (...) the body, particularly the Black body, is subjected to policing and violence. This speaks to the concept of necropolitics as it highlights how certain bodies are deemed expendable or “killable” in society, and how the policing of Blackness can be seen as a form of controlling and subjugating these bodies. The rationalization of racist acts against meticulously selected groups and bodies that are highly racialized in contemporary necrocapitalism illustrates how the politics of death and violence are used to maintain class and racist hierarchies and control over different bodies. (shrink)

Za oblikovanje teme konfliktov, zlasti skozi zgodovinsko prizmo nacionalnih držav, je nujno upoštevati zgodovinski kontekst ključnih državnih tvorb na Zahodu. Od 19. stoletja naprej so te tvorbe ohranjale oblast in suverenost, ki sta podpirali zahodno prevlado. Čeprav je tradicionalni vestfalski koncept, ki izhaja iz Vestfalskega miru (1648), uveljavil pojem nacionalnih držav kot primarnih akterjev mednarodnega prava – vsaka z vrhovno oblastjo nad svojim ozemljem –, je bila suverenost v praksi pogosto ločena od fizičnega ozemlja. Moč in oblast pogosto presegata ali (...) ne dosegata geografskih meja države, kar kaže na to, da je suverenost vedno bolj ločena od teritorialnosti. V kolonialnem kontekstu je soobstajalo več pravnih sistemov in oblasti, ki so si pogosto nasprotovali, kar je ustvarilo fluidno in konfliktno pokrajino upravljanja. To je kolonialnim silam omogočilo manevriranje med različnimi pravnimi okviri za ohranitev nadzora. V teh kolonijah je bil suspenz običajnih pravnih pravil – kar se pogosto imenuje ≫izjemno stanje≪ – prej pravilo kot izjema. (shrink)

The conversation with Jill H. Casid and Anna Campbell is a reconceptualization of several themes to develop an aesthetic that incorporates notions of the necropolitical and redefines the concept of the Anthropocene as the Necrocene. The Necrocene implies an era marked by death, decay, and the consequences of human impact on the environment, as well as a critical reflection on the choices individuals and societies make that contribute to the transition from the Anthropocene to the Necrocene. These reflections serve as (...) cautionary tales or reflections on the unsustainable path of the Anthropocene. An important reflection in the interview is how queer and transgender people are using art and assemblages to refuse the terms of the current tensions of the culture wars. (shrink)

In the article, the author addresses with two ways of dealing with life, biopolitics, and necropolitics, and connects them to the excess of power over life and death in the era of neoliberal global capitalism. Dealing with necropolitical processes requires a different analysis of spaces and temporalities, of necrospaces and necrotemporalities. It also requires consideration of the possibilities of resistance to necropolitical processes by those who are by no means silent witnesses, by no means mere victims, but subjects who have (...) undergone a process of (de)subjectivation in a way that, as Achille Mbembe would argue, leads to a process of destruction of their own subjectivity. (shrink)

Uvodnik urednic sklopa Noit Banai in Marine Gržinić.

Introduction to Filozofski vestnik 44/2 (2023), special issue, The Body in The Field of Tensions between Biopolitics and Necropolitics: Analyzing the Future of the Prosthetic Body in the 21st Century, ed. Marina Gržinić and Jovita Pristovšek.

To frame the topic of conflicts, particularly through the historical lens of nation-states, it is essential to consider the historical context of key state formations in the West. From the nineteenth century onward, these formations maintained the power and sovereignty that underpinned Western dominance. Although the traditional Westphalian concept, derived from the Peace of Westphalia (1648), established the notion of nation-states as the primary actors in international law—each with supreme authority over its territory— sovereignty has often been separated from physical (...) territory in practice. Power and authority frequently extend beyond, or fall short of, a state’s geographic boundaries, indicating that sovereignty has increasingly been decoupled from territoriality. In colonial contexts, multiple legal systems and authorities coexisted and often conflicted, creating a fluid and contested landscape of governance. This allowed colonial powers to maneuver between different legal frameworks to maintain control. In these colonies, the suspension of normal legal rules—what is often referred to as a “state of exception”—was more commonly the rule rather than the exception.1. (shrink)

Introduction by section editors Noit Banai and Marina Gržinić.

Marina Gržinić se v intervjuju s Klausom Theweleitom osredotoča na dve različni smeri razprave. Prva se nanaša na knjigo _Moške fantazije_. Leta 2027 se bliža 50. obletnica te vplivne psihoanalitične študije o psihi moških vojakov, natančneje pripadnikov Freikorps, ki so bile paravojaške skupine v Nemčiji po prvi svetovni vojni. Druga smer govori o nasilju na splošno, zlasti v kontekstu zgodovinskega nasilja, primer tega pa so dogodki v Abu Ghraibu leta 2004. Theweleitova analiza nasilja, predvsem skozi optiko njegove kritične teorije, ponuja (...) okvir za razumevanje teh dogodkov ne le kot osamljenih incidentov, temveč kot manifestacij globljih družbenopolitičnih in psiholoških tokov. Intervju preučuje številne ravni Theweleitovega dela in razmišljanja vse do danes ter se vrača k primerom zgodovinskega nasilja in njegovemu vplivu na sodobno družbo. (shrink)

In the interview with Klaus Theweleit, Marina Gržinić focuses on two distinctive lines of discussion. The first is on the book Male Fantasies. The 50th anniversary of this influential psychoanalytic study on the psyche of male soldiers, specifically the Freikorps, who were paramilitary groups in post-World War One Germany, is approaching in 2027. The second is about violence in general, particularly in the context of historical violence, of which the events at Abu Ghraib in 2004 are an example. Theweleit’s analysis (...) of violence, especially through the lens of his critical theory, provides a framework for understanding these events not just as isolated incidents but as manifestations of deeper socio-political and psychological currents. The interview examines many levels of Theweleit’s work and thinking from that moment until today, reflecting on and returning to instances of historical violence and their bearing on contemporary society. (shrink)

The main thesis of this text is that for a critical evaluation of the institutions built on the foundations of colonialism that preserve the worlds of neoliberal global capitalism, financial capitalism, and necro-capitalism, we need to rethink the two main divisions mediated by decolonial theory and decolonisation as analytical tools: the racial/colonial divide and the imperial/colonial divide. This text attempts to analyse the relation between capitalism and colonialism in order to determine the implications for the theoretical and philosophical thought of (...) two historical forms of capitalism, which are not historical at all because they are fully functional in the present: racial capitalism and settler capitalism, or racial-settler capitalism, as it is called in its joint formation. In order to get to this point, we must first see the place of colonialism in capitalism and how theory is reflected in its relationship to the past and present. Last but not least, the question this article is occupied with is: “What kind of world is this where a trans person, a woman, or a man is treated like garbage?”. (shrink)