A Necropolitical Approach to Waste Theory
-
1
Universidade da Coruña
info
ISSN: 0211-5913
Datum der Publikation: 2023
Titel der Ausgabe: Toxic Tales: Narratives of Waste in Postindustrial North America / Relatos tóxicos: Narrativas de Waste en la Norteamérica posindustrial
Nummer: 86
Seiten: 147-156
Art: Artikel
Andere Publikationen in: Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses
Zusammenfassung
Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics (2019) provides an innovative approach to dissect human relations in a contemporary world where an increasing number of people are deemed superfluous and disposable under late capitalist logic. His book offers a genealogy of the current state of affairs from a post-Foucauldian perspective that centers on the notion of race and the conception of sovereignty in Western liberal democracies. Rarely associated with Waste Theory, Mbembe articulates a necropolitical approach that complements Zygmunt Bauman’s conception of “human waste” and Giorgio Agamben’s theorizations on the figure of the homo sacer. This article thus argues that Mbembe’s Necropolitics stands as a major contribution to the field of Waste Studies, in that it encloses a reflection on the racial Other as human waste from a perspective that has not been sufficiently studied.