‘Everywhere’s a here, isn’t it?’: necropolitical power and its circular tendencies

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Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to Ashley J. Bohrer for comments on an earlier version of this review.

Notes

1 Covid-19, Christopher J. Lee argues, is importantly also a crisis of sovereignty, and therefore the ultimate test for Mbembe’s thesis in Necropolitics. See ‘The Necropolitics of Covid-19’ in Africa is a Country. Available at: https://africasacountry.com/2020/04/the-necropolitics-of-covid-19 (accessed 1 April 2020).

2 With reference to Ali Smith, Winter, London: Penguin, 2018.

3 In March 2020, Lorenz Deutsch, a politician form North Rhine-Westphalia and Felix Klein, the anti-Semitism commissioner of Germany's federal government, criticised Achille Mbembe's invitation as a keynote speaker to the Ruhrtriennale festival. According to Deutsch, Mbembe was ‘a prominent representative of the BDS movement, which is anti-Semitic at its core.' Among other things, the accusations were based on this section of Necropolitics. Subsequently, Mbembe was the subject of a heated and polarized debate in Germany. Some accused him of Holocaust relativization while others supported him and demanded Klein's dismissal. Over 377 intellectuals from more than 30 countries declared solidarity with Mbembe, speaking out against ‘ideological or political interference and litmus tests.' Mbembe rejects all accusations, and has published several reactions in German press outlets and on social media. At the time of publication, this was an ongoing debate.

4 With reference to the exhibition concept of ‘The Long Term You Cannot Afford. On the Distribution of the Toxic’, Savvy Contemporary Berlin, 2019.