Achille Mbembe
Necropolitics
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019 

We turn to life — and death. Mbembe writes,

‘Fanon attended closely to people’s experience of surfaces and depths, of lights and reflections, and of shadows. He endeavored to report on the worlds of living beings, without foundering in repetition. As regard final meanings, he knew that they were to be sought in the structural as much the obscure side of life. Whence the extraordinary attention that he gave to language, speech, music, theatre, dance, ceremonials, settings, and all sorts of technical objects and psychic structure. That said, this essay is not at all about singing back the dead but rather aims to evoke in fragmentary fashion a great thinker of transfiguration.’ pp. 7–8.

Schedule

The group met to discuss reading this book between May and July 2022. Page numbers in this schedule refer to the 2019 Duke University Press edition.

18 May, Introduction: The Ordeal of the World, pp. 1–8; Chapter 1: Exit from Democracy, pp. 9–41.

1 June, Chapter 2: The Society of Enmity, pp. 42–65.

15 June, Chapter 3: Necropolitics, pp. 66–92.

29 June, Chapter 4: Viscerality, pp. 93–116.

13 July, Chapter 5: Fanon’s Pharmacy, pp. 117–55.

27 July, Chapter 6: This Stifling Noonday, pp. 156–183; Conclusion: Ethics of the Passerby, pp. 184–90.

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