A Necropolitical Approach to Waste Theory
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Universidade da Coruña
info
ISSN: 0211-5913
Ano de publicación: 2023
Título do exemplar: Toxic Tales: Narratives of Waste in Postindustrial North America / Relatos tóxicos: Narrativas de Waste en la Norteamérica posindustrial
Número: 86
Páxinas: 147-156
Tipo: Artigo
Outras publicacións en: Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses
Resumo
Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics (2019) provides an innovative approach to dissect human relations in a contemporary world where an increasing number of people are deemed superfluous and disposable under late capitalist logic. His book offers a genealogy of the current state of affairs from a post-Foucauldian perspective that centers on the notion of race and the conception of sovereignty in Western liberal democracies. Rarely associated with Waste Theory, Mbembe articulates a necropolitical approach that complements Zygmunt Bauman’s conception of “human waste” and Giorgio Agamben’s theorizations on the figure of the homo sacer. This article thus argues that Mbembe’s Necropolitics stands as a major contribution to the field of Waste Studies, in that it encloses a reflection on the racial Other as human waste from a perspective that has not been sufficiently studied.