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  • © 2019

Necropolitics

Living Death in Mexico

Palgrave Macmillan

Authors:

  • Explores the immanent production of life – albeit amid violence – that underpins contemporary politics
  • Focuses on crises themselves, rather than their aftermath, and thereby pointing to a living amid violent death
  • Decentralizes death beyond the state to involve a range of actors (cartels, vigilante groups) that dislodge questions of administration

Part of the book series: Studies of the Americas (STAM)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
  2. Life, Death and Power

    • R. Guy Emerson
    Pages 1-20
  3. The Wounded Body

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 21-21
    2. Necropolitics: From Corpse to Body

      • R. Guy Emerson
      Pages 23-42
  4. The Mutilated Body

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 101-101
    2. Thanatopolitics: Mutilating Autodefensas

      • R. Guy Emerson
      Pages 103-126
    3. Mutilation Extended

      • R. Guy Emerson
      Pages 127-148
    4. Necropolitics: Governing by the Campfire

      • R. Guy Emerson
      Pages 171-187
  5. Back Matter

    Pages 189-190

About this book

This book offers a contemporary look at violence in Mexico and argues for a recalibration in how necropolitics, as the administration of life and death, is understood. The author locates the forces of mortality directly on the body, rather than as an object of government, thereby placing death in a politics of the everyday. This necropolitics is explored through testimonies of individuals living in towns overrun by organized crime and resistance groups, namely, the autodefensa movement, that operate throughout Michoacán, one of the most violent states in Mexico. This volume studies how individuals and communities go on living not in spite of the death that surrounds life, but more disturbingly by attuning to it.

Reviews

“An original and incisive study of life, death and power in contemporary Mexico, Emerson’s book makes an important contribution to the analysis of biopolitics and necropolitics and to an understanding of the phenomenological modulations of living in the death worlds of Michoacán. A timely, keenly observed and elegantly argued contribution.” (Silvia Posocco, Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birbeck, University of London, UK)

 

 

Authors and Affiliations

  • International Relations and Political Science, Universidad de las Américas Puebla, San Andrés Cholula, Mexico

    R. Guy Emerson

About the author

R. Guy Emerson is Professor at the Department of International Relations and Political Science at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Mexico.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access