Necropolitics

“It was enough to suggest the presence of bone, a skull, or a skeleton inside the element. This bone, this skull, and this skeleton all have names: repopulation of the Earth, exit from democracy, society of enmity, relation without desire, voice of blood, and terror and counterterror as our time’s medication and poison.”

Mbembe challenges the mythology of democracy as a type of government that protects and serves its citizens. Instead, he argues that it is built on a foundation of violence, stemming from colonialism, that continues to be one of its most defining features. Concepts like repopulation and an exit from democracy represent the characteristics that Mbembe claims are the hallmarks of contemporary politics.

“War is determined as end and necessity not only in democracy but also in politics and in culture. War has become both remedy and poison—our pharmakon.”

One of Mbembe’s central ideas is that democracy is a pharmakon, a remedy that is both medicine and poison. Here, he highlights how democracies benefit some while oppressing others, a dynamic that he later argues democracies define by class and race.

“But pure and unlimited violence, however creative it was set on being, could never be safeguarded from potential blindness.”

Sovereign states justify violence in various ways. Mbembe explains that the initial uses of violence in a government may come from a place that aligns with democracy’s ideals. However, the use of violence in this way expands it rather than quelling it. Soon, the government becomes unable or unwilling to recognize its actions as violent, compromising its ideals.