Necropolitical complicities: (re)constructing a normative somatechnics of Iraq

Abstract

This article theorizes the concept of necropolitical complicities in the construction and writing of ethno-sectarian identities in the context of the war in Iraq. Drawing on Mbembe's concept of necropolitics in relation to the (re)construction of a normative somatechnics, the article argues for an acknowledgment of operative colonial epistemologies and techniques of governance that have fuelled contemporary sectarian violence in Iraq. The interplay between these epistemologies and techniques of governance and the violent assertions of Iraqi ethno-religious identities are theorized as necropolitical complicities.

Keywords:

• colonialism
• necropolitics
• somatechnics
• war in Iraq
• sovereignty
• race and ethnicity
• ethno-sectarian violence

Notes

1. For a quick guide to the neologism, “somatechnics”, see the Critical and Cultural Studies (Macquarie University, Australia) website (http://www.ccs.mq.edu.au/research.php). See also my attempt to define it in an earlier essay, “Media necropower: Australian media reception and the somatechnics of Mamdouh Habib” (Osuri 2006).

2. In this essay, Perera maps a colonial constitution of identity and its violent effects in both Sri-Lanka and Australia. She argues that “the ethnically divided postcolony of Sri Lanka is the product of the interlocking of two broad systems of differentiation, indigenous and colonial” (Perera 2006).

3. I thank the referee who clarified somatechnics as a material effect on embodiment in this passage. I have used the referee's words in this sentence to convey this theorization of somatechnics.

4. I draw on this de Certeauvian notion as theorized by Joseph Pugliese in his article “The event-trauma of the carceral post-human”, where he outlines how refugee acts of self-harm recuperated into a narrative of resistance function as a liberal humanist desire for a “pre-existing humanist subject” – a position that is impossible “legislatively and juridically” for refugees and asylum seekers to occupy in the Australian context (Pugliese 2007, 80).

5. Urvashi Butalia's (2000) The other side of silence: Voices from the Partition of India chronicles such narratives.