Presentation short abstract

We discuss the implications of extending necropolitics to analysis of human subordination of nonhuman life in PE, and argue that necropolitics' application must fully engage with concepts of postcoloniality, de-humanization, race, and reflexive consciousness that undergird Mbembe’s theory.

Presentation long abstract

Scholars in political ecology have widely engaged with Foucauldian biopolitics to analyze the logics and techniques that shape conservation programs (Biermann and Anderson 2017). Political ecologists have examined how conservation practices order, prioritize, and manage nonhuman life. Several studies have highlighted that interventions to make some species live, however, often entail making, not merely letting, others die. Given these limitations, some political ecologists have turned to Achille Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics (Mbembe, 2005; 2019). Necropolitics theorizes the spatial logics of death-making, including processes of confinement, exclusion, and dispossession (Mbembe, 2003). Political ecologists have drawn on necropolitics to theorize state practices that reconfigure human-nonhuman relationships (Bluwstein and De Rosa, 2024; Margulies, 2019). While this provides an important corrective to center killing and violence in human-nonhuman relationships, several important elements of Mbembe’s framework have been neglected. We discuss the implications of extending necropolitics to analysis of human subordination of nonhuman life, and argue that applications of necropolitics must fully engage with concepts of postcoloniality, de-humanization, race, and reflexive consciousness that undergird Mbembe’s theory. We argue that while the efforts to employ Mbembe’s work in political ecology highlight some of the limits of the concept of biopolitics, we build upon recent critiques of readings of necropolitics within political ecology (Gibson, 2024; Peters et al., 2024) and discuss the consequences of applying necropolitics in ways that ignore the social contexts and processes driving the necessity of Mbembe’s theory.