The necropolitical spectrum

Abstract

This article sets forth a theoretical framework that first argues that necropolitical power and sovereignty should be understood as existing on a spectrum that ultimately produces the phenomenon of surplus death – such as pandemic deaths or those disappeared by the state. We then expound this framework by juxtaposing the necropolitical negligence of the COVID-19 pandemic with the violence of forced disappearances to argue that the surplus dead have the unique capacity to create political change and reckonings, due to their embodied power and agency. Victims of political killings and disappearance may not seem to have much in common with victims of disease, yet focusing on the mistreatment of the dead in both instances reveals uncanny patterns and similarities. We demonstrate that this overlap, which aligns in key ways that are particularly open to use by social actors, provides an entry to comprehend the agency of the dead to incite political reckonings with the violence of state action and inaction.

Grave Reverberations: Inherited Colonial Logics during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Philippines

“…Some call for an investigation into epidemics' afterlives, which include 'subplots, spin-offs, and tensions' (Vargha 2020, 696). Scholars also show how austerity measures imposed by governments and institutions in the Global North which then set the stage for necropolitical violence impacting marginalised communities (Iturriaga and Denman 2022). Indigenous peoples experience intense grief amid universal policies on death governance and amid dominant human rights discourse that disregarded cultural imperatives (Cruz-Santiago and Schwartz-Marin 2021; Rial 2022).…”