Rouse CM. NECROPOLITICS VERSUS BIOPOLITICS: Spatialization, White Privilege, and Visibility during a Pandemic.
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2021;
36:360-367. [PMID:
34898841 PMCID:
PMC8653271 DOI:
10.14506/ca36.3.03]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
Anthropologists have used Michel Foucault's thesis on biopolitics to critique modern institutions. Yet while useful, biopolitics is often misapplied. The arrests, killings of unarmed Blacks by police, COVID-19 racial health inequities, and the January 6 white nationalist act of sedition made visible fault lines between a biopolitical system set up to care for whites and a necropolitical system that treats Black bodies as expendable. By critiquing the facile overuse of biopolitics and biopower, this article also speaks to what COVID-19 uncovered within the academy.
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