The banality of necropolitics

Abstract

In this article, we establish an initial parallel between the “banality of evil,” a concept coined by Hannah Arendt in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, and “necropolitics,” proposed by Achille Mbembe at the beginning of the 21st century, arguing that necropolitics has lost its critical purpose. When Arendt describes evil as banal by observing the triviality of how Eichmann carried out heinous orders during the Holocaust, highlighting the normalization of extreme violence, it is the naturalness of horror that makes the term banal so uncomfortable. Mbembe, in turn, develops the concept of necropolitics to analyse how contemporary power decides who can live and who must die, especially in contexts of colonialism, racism, and state sovereignty. This text points out how both concepts were quickly assimilated and trivialized by public opinion, losing part of their original impact. Necropolitics, in particular, has been widely used in media and political discourses, often in a simplistic and misleading way, distancing itself from its philosophical complexity. The article warns of the risk of emptying the concept, which can be instrumentalized for purposes contrary to those proposed by Mbembe. Finally, we defend the need to reterritorialize the concept, de-banalizing its trivialization and preserving its critical potential.