In Necropolitics Achille Mbembe a leader in the new wave of francophone critical theory
theorizes the genealogy of the contemporary world a world plagued by ever-increasing
inequality militarization enmity and terror as well as by a resurgence of racist fascist
and nationalist forces determined to exclude and kill. He outlines how democracy has begun to
embrace its dark side---what he calls its "nocturnal body"---which is based on the desires
fears affects relations and violence that drove colonialism. This shift has hollowed out
democracy thereby eroding the very values rights and freedoms liberal democracy routinely
celebrates. As a result war has become the sacrament of our times in a conception of
sovereignty that operates by annihilating all those considered enemies of the state. Despite
his dire diagnosis Mbembe draws on post-Foucauldian debates on biopolitics war and race as
well as Fanon's notion of care as a shared vulnerability to explore how new conceptions of the
human that transcend humanism might come to pass. These new conceptions would allow us to
encounter the Other not as a thing to exclude but as a person with whom to build a more just
world.
