Necropolitics and the Global Politics of Death

✒️:.Shahid Manzoor Bhat

Book Review :.
Necropolitics by Achille Mbembe
Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics is not just a book about power—it’s about how the world organizes life and death.

At its core, Necropolitics asks: who controls death in our time? In the twenty-first century, Mbembe argues, war has become the new “sacrament.” Borders are no longer mere lines—they are zones of exclusion, places where some are left to die so others can live safely. He names this the society of enmity: a condition where fear of the “Other” replaces any real sense of shared humanity.
Globally, the book resonates with post-colonial struggles and the persistence of racial hierarchies under new guises—through security regimes, drone wars, refugee camps, and economic abandonment. Mbembe writes from Africa, but his reach is planetary: from Europe’s gated borders to America’s prisons, from Palestine to Congo, he shows how colonial logic still shapes modern governance.
Seen from Kashmir—or any region caught between state power and lived resistance—the text feels hauntingly familiar. The constant militarization, the moral claim of “security,” and the normalization of exceptional violence all echo Mbembe’s idea that democracy today often wears the mask of death’s administrator. His words help frame what many communities experience but rarely find language for: the feeling of being governed through fear, surveillance, and the slow erosion of dignity.
What makes Necropolitics remarkable is its refusal to despair. Beneath the darkness, Mbembe still looks for what he calls an “ethics of the passerby”—a fragile, humane way of being with others despite fear and loss. In Kashmir, as in Gaza or the Sahel, this idea invites reflection on coexistence beyond identity, and on reclaiming care where politics has forgotten it.
Stylistically, Mbembe writes with density and rhythm—part philosophy, part poetry. The prose is demanding, but not without reward. His global vision, shaped by Fanon and postcolonial thought, feels both academic and prophetic.
Verdict:
Necropolitics is essential reading for anyone trying to understand how power now works—whether through drones, borders, or silence. It’s a difficult but necessary mirror for our times, and a text that feels as relevant in Kashmir as it does in Paris, Johannesburg, or New York.

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