Biopolitics V. Necropolitics

Continuing to do a little bit of reading on the term necropolitics, I found this.

The term ‘biopolitics’ was coined by Michel Foucault in the 1970s. For him it meant ‘make live and let die’. It is obvious that Foucault’s biopolitics, originating at the time of the Cold War, is a specific conceptualization of capitalist liberal governmentality exclusively reserved for the First Capitalist World. It presented the liberal capitalism of the 1970s as ‘taking care’ -but only of the citizens of First Capitalist World nation states. What was going on in the Second (the Eastern European) and Third Worlds was not at the centre of the management of life in the First Capitalist World. The title of one of the James Bond films from the 1970s is an accurate description of biopolitics: Live and Let Die (1973).

As with biopolitics, I propose a short definition of necropolitics in order to understand Mbembe’s conceptualization of it. Necropolitics states: ‘let live and make die’. Necropolitics presents a management of life for the global neo-liberal capitalist world. It transforms the aim to ‘make live’ into ‘let live’, but ‘let live’ is a form of life that is far from the cosy structures of better life (‘make live’). ‘Let live’ presents a pure abandonment. You can live if you have means (with the help of a lineage or pedigree of money and power) and all those who cannot live in the situation of a pure abandonment by the neo-liberal public capitalist structures are to be left to die, or in many other occasions made to die, for example in New Orleans, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan and in many other places and times around the world. ¹

What I’m taking from this:

Biopolitics is the attempted management (caring for) the lives of subjects. As subjects we encounter biopolitics when the power-that-be try to make us live in a particular way, usually a “healthy” way. In this way we are subjects of biopolitics.

First-world systems of power have applied biopolitics to subjects by attempting to make the subjects live “well” (i.e. to live normative lives). The powers-that-be try to help the subjects of biopolitics live lives that would be seen to be “comfortable” or “comfortable-enough”.

Individuals in the colonized or occupied territories are not subjected to biopolitics. Rather, these colonized people are subjected to a necropolitics, where the powers-that-be just leave them alone / let them live (sans any attempt to manage their lives), or leave them alone / let them die (sans any attempt to prevent their deaths).

Put it another way:

1. The subject of biopolitics experiences power attempting to get them to live in a “healthy” way. Regardless of how the subject responds to this (complying with it or reeling against it) the power cares enough to try to enable the subject to live in a particular “healthy” (normative) way. The subject of biopolitics can expect the systems of power to attempt to protect them… even if the subject does not want to be protected.
2. The subject of necropolitics experiences power standing off to the side. The power is indifferent to the subject’s lived experience and just wants the subject to leave the source of power alone to occupy the space and do its thing (whatever that is). The subjects of necropolitics know that power will not attempt to protect them, even though they could if they wanted to.