[-empyre-] Vor dem Gesetz/Before the Law, hoveringly

[Aneta Stojnic]

> Johannes Birringer <Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk> wrote: ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> I am glad Aneta has arrived and just posted her long and intricate prose, which of course was partly a sketching of the critical landscape for this new book on endangered bodies...... 
> 

Dear Johannes thanx for your questions and reflections it's true there was a lot of things for the first post, I just thought to offer them all on the table and see what resonates - not necessarily  to go on with everything in details or again yes if there is interest... 

> And now that I reflect,
> as I did when Monika first mentioned the metaphor of the garden, I am trying to understand what you mentioned, this "necropolitics", this war machine, this pop-up body [?} [and Ana just thought we needed to see this photo [!],]

The concept of necropolitics seams to me crucial for understanding and/or thinking of the violence here discussed, for I believe it is important to be able to think and understand the global processes behind these events. 
In 2003 the African philosopher and political scientist Achille Mbembe argued that  Faucault's concept of biopolitics is no longer sufficient to explain contemporary relations of power. Unlike biopolitics and bipower that govern from the perspective of the production and regulation of life, production of specific forms of life "life styles", necropolitics regulates life from the perspective of a production and regulation of death.  The notion of ‘necropolitics’ refers to life reduced to its bare existence, in other words, to life at the verge of death, the dispensable life.  Here I am really sorry that Marina Grzinic could not participate the discussion she made some very precise analyses of how biopolitics as mode of governmentally can be described in an axiomatic way as “make live and let die”, while in  necropolitics this expression is rephrased as to "let live and make die". 

In other words, at one hand we have the first capitalist world where life is regulated by the means of biopolitics and on the other hand there are the others the so called "third worlds" where life is regulated by Necropolitics. 
The war machine is the tool of global capitalism that profits on the production of "death worlds" outside of the borders of the biopolitical first capitalist world (in fact Mbembe first articulated the term necropolitics in order to explain these processes in Africa, but we can also think about the wars Middle East and elsewhere) as well as racial the discrimination (the "fortress Europe" and situation of migrants and asylum seekers for example).  

You are right when making a link towards the horrific photo that Ana shared with us - I was already deeply disturbed when I read this news last week, and yes it is yet another dark example the governmentally of death. 

> The other day I cited from Hamed's play ("Home is in Our Past") and when I remember it, the "no" actually was the most reverberant single word I heard next to the unbelievable vocal performance 
> by the woman singer which cut to the bone and was untranslatable.  The man/soldier/immgrant in the mud, the one submerged in the dirt and the grey mass of vile liquid, he probably could not hear her.


That is beautifully said and sadly true and makes me wonder who was she singing to? In a circle coming back to the question of art: who are we speaking to? 



I'll come back to answer your other questions / reflections in my next post. 

Till soon, greetings to all, 

Aneta

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