the death of everything

December 13, 2023 5:50 PM

This thread sent me down an absolute rabbit-hole of doomy cultural theory--necropolitics, necrofuturism, necrocapitalism. Where can I read more about these three miserable concepts, plus any other critical -isms that begin with necro-? Most especially, where can I find easy to read stuff about it, since a lot of heavy-duty theory now goes over my head?
posted by mittens to Society & Culture (4 answers total)

I couldn’t make it through Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics, but here’s a quick primer from Teen Vogue: What Is Necropolitics? The Political Calculation of Life and Death.
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:22 PM on December 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

(Tangentially, let me point you towards this line from Jeff Sharlet and Kathryn Joyce : “ ...the current clusterfuck of crises so vast and interconnected that they might more simply be called our condition ...” Sharlet’s book, The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War, talks about the grief of living in Our Condition. It’s grounded and impressionistic and very readable. It’s not theory of necropolitics, but it does address American responses to the feeling of living in overwhelming crises.)
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:44 PM on December 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

the legal concept of the 'dead hand' (mortmain) is at least tangentially related to necrocapital; the Rule Against Perpetuities exists to limit 'how long the dead hand may rule.'
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:16 PM on December 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Hear me out here, Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series is lesbian space opera necromancy yes, but also, no spoilers, very much now-relevant doomy cultural theory.

Easy to read... to start off.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:30 AM on December 14, 2023 [1 favorite]