Necropower

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of violence and death in the context of narcowar and the theoretical and philosophical questions it raises. It develops and uses a new mode of analysing killing. This mode of analysis—in contrast to conventional interpretations of cruelty and carnage—explores both the cultural and the sociopolitical significance of killing and its relationship to power, the social structure, and moral and political responsibility. It also identifies and brings together the key themes of this complex phenomenon and, in so doing, formulates a more coherent conceptual basis for both empirical interpretation and theoretical understanding of this problem. In particular, the chapter locates the study of everyday violence in Mexico firmly within contemporary sociocultural discourse while continuously relating it to society’s cultural inheritance. In addition, it approaches these twin issues of violence and death in a non-normative manner. And, as such, it teases out the manifestations of the shifting relation between life and death in the context of power politics. The theoretical context of these debates is anchored in the works of Giorgio Agamben, Georges Bataille, René Girard, and Achille Mbembe.

In their myths there is no grace or charm, no poetry. Only this perpetual grudge, grudge, grudge, grudging, one god grudging another, the gods grudging men their existence, and men grudging the animals

(Lawrence 1967: 32)