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The Game of Thrones Between Life and Death: What is Necropolitics and Why Should We Care?
In today's society, the exercise of power not only limits people's lives to survival, but also forces some people to face the threat of death. This is the core idea explored by Necropolitics. This theory reveals how certain groups are dominated by social and political forces, which determine their fate of life and death.
Necropolitics is the use of social and political power to determine how certain people live and how certain people must die.
This chilling concept was first explored in depth by scholar Achille Mbembe in 2003. He proposed the concept of the "dead world", a new form of social existence in which large sections of the population face living conditions where they are considered the "living dead". This is not only a deprivation of life, but also an erosion of the meaning of human existence.
Under the conditions of necropocracy, the boundaries between resistance and suicide, sacrifice and redemption, martyrdom and freedom become blurred.
The boundary between life and death is constantly blurred, and this concept is closely related to the biopower proposed by Michel Foucault. Foucault pointed out that in the process of population control, certain groups are seen as more valuable, which structures society's assessment of the value of life. Over time, this assessment has led to certain groups of people being seen as having a cheap lifespan. "Living death" became a byword for the oppressed group.
For example, slavery, apartheid, the colonization of Palestine, and the emergence of suicide attackers all demonstrate how states direct the life and death of different groups through different forms of necropolitics. This manifestation of political violence and its erasure of identity has reduced many people to a kind of "living dead who no longer possess self-sovereignty."
Only certain groups of people are “marked as wasted,” and the conditions of these wasted lives are closely tied to the “ordinary reproduction of everyday life.”
In a society intertwined with necropsy, racism plays an important role, leading to the systematic degradation of the life value of certain ethnic groups. When a person is unable to voluntarily limit his or her own life or even freely express his or her own existence, the individual is considered to be in a state of social or political death. This situation is particularly evident in the contemporary prison system, where some prisoners cannot survive and can only grope for the meaning of survival in pain.
Of course, necropolitics is not limited to European or American governance mechanisms; its impact is felt around the world. In the Palestinian region, long-term political persecution has plunged countless refugees into despair, and the lack of effective social services and international support has pushed these people to the brink of life and death.
In modern discussions on gender and sexual orientation, Queer Necropolitics has also emerged. This concept focuses on the LGBTQ+/queer community in the post-9/11 era, revealing how these populations simultaneously face the penetration of Islamophobia and the violence they experience themselves within the violent framework of society. As Judith Butler argues, these lives cannot be properly mourned because within the framework of necropocracy, the meaning and value of death are questioned.
In the face of death, the living conditions and life values of some groups of people are treated as worthless "bare lives".
The politics of death reveals the cruelty of contemporary society. Death is no longer just the end of life, but a political phenomenon. Among oppressed groups, every moment of life is accompanied by the threat of death, and only through constant struggle can they find that meager living space. It is this power boundary between life and death that constitutes the true face of the existence of certain ethnic groups in the world today.
Of course, can such a power game really be broken?
