[Authors and titles are listed at the end of this review]
Necropolitics is the study of political sovereignty in relation to the “living dead” — those peoples relegated to social conditions such that, although they remain physically alive, they no longer possess sovereignty over their living body. This sociopolitical term, effectively an extension of Foucault’s biopower, was first coined by the political theorist Joseph-Achille Mbembe in a 2003 article, utilizing such a framework to describe, among other examples, the colonialist occupation of Palestine.[1] Subsequent variations by others scholars consider how the dead are utilized in political contexts, as with Banu Bargu’s broadening of the term into “necropolitical violence” to describe ways that political powers target the living through their treatment of the dead.[2]
This theoretical framework has conventionally been applied to modern political regimes as with the example of Bargu’s analysis of the reaction of the Turkish government to the failed military coup in 2016 with the establishment of a “cemetery of traitors.” It is no exaggeration to say that necropolitics has been among the most discussed of ideas for such sociopolitical analyses of modern societies in recent years. Google Scholar, for instance, claims over 16,000 citations of Mbembe’s original article at the time of this writing. As noted in the present volume though, it is an approach far less prevalent among scholarship of pre-modern societies (p. 8), and has only rarely been deployed for studies of Greco-Roman antiquity.[3] Accordingly, the present volume can rightly claim to be among the first to extend such a framework into this field.
Part 1 consists of a single chapter by Alexandros Velaoras that functions as the introduction. Prudently, Velaoras does not merely outline Mbembe’s theory, but rather diligently sketches out a useful conceptual history behind it that spans before Mbembe’s usage and gives an overview some later adaptations, such as that of Bargu. Before providing an overview of the remaining chapters, he also provides various examples of necropolitics from the ancient Greek world (pp. 8-9), establishing the viability of such a framework for the study of the antiquity.
Following this, Part 2 turns to necropolitical readings of the ancient Greek cultural imagination, primarily from archaic and classical Greek texts. Chapters 2 and 3 concern each of the Homeric poems, respectively. The first of this pair, by Cezary Kucewicz, wisely avoids the obvious and well-trodden topic of discussion for Iliadic necropolitics: Achilles’ maltreatment of Hector’s corpse. Instead, this chapter explores the disparity in treatment of the corpses of elite and non-elite soldiers throughout the poem. The account in Book Seven, for instance, of mass burials of common soldiers, whose bodies have only been hastily washed, stands in stark contrast to the lavish treatment and funeral games given to prominent figures, like Patroclus (pp. 30-31). Such a class-dimension of ancient necropolitics is, then, convincingly argued as functioning to reinforce the social hierarchies of the living.
The second Homeric chapter, by Jesse Weiner, considers Odysseus’ treatment of the suitors and Telemachus’ hanging of the female slaves, juxtaposed against the previous interpretations that considered these actions as simply uncontrolled and bloodlust-filled slaughter (pp. 49-50). Instead, these events are theorized as being far more calculated actions, bound up with the reassertion of Odysseus’ sovereignty. Weiner’s comparison to the Holocaust (pp. 54-55) may seem at first to be hyperbolic, but the basic point works well to express to political use of such violence to reenforce sovereignty, even if drastically different in scale.
In both cases, reading such aspects of the Homeric poems through a necropolitical lens offers novel means of interpreting possibly deliberately political deeds that traditionally are ascribed to more arbitrary factors, such as carelessness (the common fate of Iliadic soldiers), or frenzied bloodlust (the suitors’ deaths).
The next two chapters, then, consider necropolitical readings of Sophoclean tragedy. Efimia Karakantza’s chapter argues that the Sophoclean Ajax is akin to Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the homo sacer (p. 63), illustrating how a necropolitical reading can even been applied to the position of a single individual. In a similar vein, Chapter 5 by Zina Giannopoulou deals with a play ideal for this theme of necropolitics: Sophocles’ Antigone. Naturally, the Creon’s prohibition on burying Polynices’ corpse provides ample material for such discussion, while Giannopoulou also puts forth the interpretation that the suicides of Antigone and Haemon can be read as actions that undermine Creon’s necropolitical power (p. 99). Velaoras, then, concludes Part 2 with a chapter that furnishes another variation on the necropolitical – the notion of an “Athenian necropolitical micro-apparatus” (p. 107), a Foucauldian dispositif that serves to reproduce the ideology of the polis. This section examines the three versions of Creon’s edict in Antigone, Seven Against Thebes, and Phoenician Women, as well as other scattered elements in Athenian tragedy such as Electra’s lament about the lack of mourning for her father. This chapter is particularly useful as, not a counterpoint to the prior two chapters of Part 2, but to also illustrate how ancient necropolitical power can also take on a more diffuse form than that wielded by a single tyrannos like Creon.
Part 3, then, ostensibly concerns material evidence, as suggested by the title. Chapter 7 by Dimitrios Bosnakis meticulously examines the extant material evidence of burial practices of classical Athens, specifically “non-normative” burials, interpreted here as occupying an “intermediate grey zone between honour and disgrace.” (p. 141). This serves primarily as a collation of the extant evidence on such aberrant burials, usefully broken down into five types, perhaps most intriguing of which are those interpreted as instances of “necrophobia,” and, therefore, possibly the result of ideas concerning revenant-like entities (pp. 153-154).
Katerina Oikonomopoulou’s Chapter 8, then, concerns necropolitical violence in the accounts of the Late Roman Republic from Plutarch, Appian, and Cassius Dio – an exclusively textual focus that makes this chapter misplaced within a section dedicated to material evidence. Despite that peculiar placement, it serves as a capable and lucid examination of the topic in these historiographical sources, concerning events such as the dishonorable treatment of the bodies of the Gracchi Brothers and Cicero. These accounts of internal strife are also fruitfully compared to how this trio of historians depicted such violence perpetrated by the external enemies of Rome (p. 168).
Chapter 9 by Angeliki Syrkou, then, concludes this part with a broad exploration of torture practices implemented in antiquity with emphasis on a Foucauldian analysis of torture as an expression of sovereign power. Similar to the prior chapter, the evidence under the microscope here, is predominantly that of textual sources, rather than material. In this case, there are, however, a few passing references to archaeological finds (e.g., the human remains found in the second-century BCE Lete tomb at p. 194, and the corpses excavated at Phaleron that had been bound in chains at p. 198). Nonetheless, this chapter functions as an interesting, albeit superficial, collation of textual references on ancient torture practices.
Finally, the single chapter of Part 4 by Benjamin Eldon Stevens explores the intersection of classical reception and necropolitics in two films by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, The Lobster (2015), and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017). This analysis is further infused with a focus on posthumanism in these films and also offers a well-thought-out articulation of the utility of classical reception for studies of the modern horror genre (pp. 209-211). This last chapter, then, serves to highlight the most commendable quality of this volume: the diversity of applications that these necropolitical readings offer, especially when combined with other theoretical frameworks. Rather than merely apply Mbembe’s existing theory in a generic manner, most chapters tend to exhibit a more active and creative type of engagement with that theory, serving to bring new light to this over two-decade old perspective. As Giannopoulou aptly comments at the end of her chapter in reference to the liberatory aspects of Antigone’s suicide, such a necropolitical reading of Antigone “transforms Mbembe’s theory of subjugation into one of emancipation of political subjects, at least in fiction” (p. 103). Such creative transformations of Mbembe’s framework and its related terminology, then, can be seen with many instructive variants in the forgoing analyses, as with Giannopoulou’s “mental death-worlds,” Velaoras’ “necropolitical micro-apparatus,” and Stevens’ “posthumanist necropolitics.”
While Part 3 seems at first glance to offer three chapters on material evidence, this is not actually the case, as discussed above. The editors seem to have intend this as a contrast to the theme of Part 2 on “the imaginary.” Yet, this is certainly a misleading use of the term “material evidence” to mean something like “real occurrences,” which is not satisfactorily explained in Velaoras’ introductory chapter. Despite the impression of being a more well-balanced volume, as also suggested by the book’s description, it should be considered predominantly of use for scholarship on ancient textual sources, rather than for contributions to the study of material evidence, aside from Bosnakis’ chapter, and that of Stevens for classical reception.
The overall volume is, nonetheless, commendable and lucid, with chapters that will be primarily of interest for scholars of Homer, Sophocles, and classical Athens, providing a varied assortment of analyses on these and other topics. Moreover, it serves as an innovative and insightful volume for the diversity of possible applications of Mbembe’s necropolitics that will hopefully inspire further scholarly applications of ancient necropolitics.
Authors and titles
Part 1: Theoretical Considerations
- Introduction: From Necropolitics to Ancient Necropolitics (Alexandros Velaoras)
Part 2: Necropolitics in Configurations of the Imaginary
- Necropolitics in the Iliad: Between Myth and Reality (Cezary Kucewicz)
- Odysseus’ Corpses: Necropolitics and Homer’s Odyssey (Jesse Weiner)
- Sophocles’ Ajax: The Necropolitical Treatment of the Hero’s Life and Death (Efimia D. Karakantza)
- Enacting Necropolitics in Sophocles’ Antigone (Zina Giannopoulou)
- The Non-burial at Thebes: Attic Tragedy and the Athenian Necropolitical Micro-apparatus (Alexandros Velaoras)
Part 3: Dead and (Un)buried: The Material Evidence
- Deviations from Necro-normality in Ancient Greek Poleis: The Governance of the Corpse (Modalities and Symbolisms) (Dimitrios Bosnakis)
- Necropolitical Violence and Roman Power in Imperial Greek Biography and Historiography (Katerina Oikonomopoulou)
- Forms of Necropolitical Violence in Antiquity (Angeliki Syrkou)
Part 4: Necropolitics in Classical Reception
- A Necropolitics of Posthuman Bodies? Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster (2015) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) (Benjamin Eldon Stevens)
Notes
[1] Mbembe, J.-A. (2003), “Necropolitics,” Public Culture 15, 11-40, at 27.
[2] Bargu, B. (2019), “Another Necropolitics,” in B. Bargu (ed.), Turkey’s Necropolitical Laboratory: Democracy, Violence, and Resistance, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 209-231, at 213
[3] A pair of previous book chapters is noted by Velaoras at p. 8, n.25. A search of the relevant terms in L’Année philologique reveals only two other works of classical scholarship that prominently utilize this framework.