Waste of humanity and sovereign power: Achille Mbembe, reader of Giorgio Agamben

Abstract

Starting from Achille Mbembe's essay Necropolitics (2003), in which the author lays the foundations for an argument about the existence of a politics of death born of colonial power, we seek to expose some elements of Giorgio Agamben's philosophy that have contributed to this formulation. This article proposes an approach to Agamben's concepts of “naked life”, “state of exception” and “biopolitics”, based on Mbembe's interpretation, which seeks to understand sovereign power in the face of the experience of the expansion of colonial power and its globalization in the twentieth century. By examining the strategies of objectifying populations considered disposable and diminishing their human condition, we seek to clarify aspects of the concept of necropolitics.