A Necropolitical Approach to Waste Theory

  1. Martín Fernández Fernández 1
  1. 1 Universidade da Coruña
    info

    Universidade da Coruña

    La Coruña, España

    ROR https://ror.org/01qckj285

Journal:
Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses

ISSN: 0211-5913

Year of publication: 2023

Issue Title: Toxic Tales: Narratives of Waste in Postindustrial North America / Relatos tóxicos: Narrativas de Waste en la Norteamérica posindustrial

Issue: 86

Pages: 147-156

Type: Article

DOI: 10.25145/J.RECAESIN.2023.86.09 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openRIULL editor

More publications in: Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses

Abstract

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.