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Movement I · Week 4
Who Are We and What Do We Think?
Who Gets
to Live
WEEK 4 · CRDM 790

"Sovereignty is the capacity to define who matters and who does not, who is disposable and who is not."

— Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics
CRDM 790 · Week 4Session Map
Today's 3.5 Hours
Sovereignty, Death-Worlds, and the Bodies We Study
0:00–0:20
Foucault → Mbembe: where does biopolitics stop short? Framing
Open by establishing what Foucault says about biopower. Then: where does Mbembe say Foucault stops? (pp. 66–68). The extension to death — not just life — is the conceptual move.
0:20–1:10
Core concepts + Palestine analysis Discussion
Sovereignty, state of exception, death-world, necropower. The Palestine occupation section (pp. 75–85) gets extended attention — this is the most concrete section and the most politically charged. Do not avoid it.
1:10–1:45
Students share examples from pre-class prompt Sharing
These anchor the abstract argument in something concrete. Be prepared for examples that are graphic or personally resonant — hold the room.
1:45–2:00
Break Rest
2:00–3:00
Concept Translation Workshop — pairs Activity
Map the making live / letting die / making die triad onto partners' examples. Test where the concept holds and where it strains.
3:00–3:30
Synthesis + Preview Week 5
How does necropolitics sit alongside Giroux and Benjamin? What critical vocabulary are we building? Transition: next week Brown asks what the university does to make this possible.
CRDM 790 · Week 4Reading Guide
This Week's Text
Mbembe, Necropolitics
Assigned (Perusall) · Duke UP 2019, trans. Corcoran
  • Introduction — pp. 1–14 (~14 pp.)
  • Chapter 3 'Necropolitics' — pp. 66–92 (~27 pp.) — this is the conceptual core
Discussion Anchor Pages
  • Mbembe on sovereignty and exception — pp. 66–68
  • Colonial occupation of Palestine — pp. 75–85 — most concrete; most charged
Suggested (Not Required)
  • Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth — Introduction + Preface
  • Christina Sharpe, In the Wake
Pre-Class Writing Prompt (Perusall)

Identify one concept from Mbembe directly applicable to your research area. Write a 3–4 sentence annotation explaining how — not just "this relates to power" but what specific mechanism, operating in what you study.

Bring to Class

One example — from media, policy, your archive, or your community — that you think illustrates necropolitical logic. Be ready to put it on the table.

Making Live

Foucault's biopower — the investment of power in producing life, health, population. Who is supported, cared for, made to flourish.

Letting Die

The withdrawal of support — exposure to death through neglect, abandonment, deprivation. Not active killing, but structural indifference.

Making Die

Mbembe's extension — the direct, sovereign exercise of the right to kill. Who is targeted, eliminated, made to inhabit a death-world.

CRDM 790 · Week 4Discussion Questions
Seminar · 0:20–1:45
Questions Worth
Sitting With
1
Mbembe builds on Foucault's biopolitics — not just who is 'made to live' but who is 'let die,' or actively made to die. How does that distinction change how you think about power in your research area?'Necropolitics' is not a metaphor for Mbembe. It describes actual bodies. Where do you see this logic operating in what you study?
2
What does it mean for humanistic scholarship to 'take seriously the bodies it touches'? What would change in your own project if you foregrounded that?Not just as a theoretical gesture — but in how you frame your problem, who you cite, what sources you use.
3
Mbembe writes from a specific historical and geographic context. How does that situatedness shape his argument — and what work does that do for you as a reader arriving from a different position?How do you use a framework built from one context in a different one — without erasing either?
4
How does Mbembe's framework sit alongside or complicate the frameworks from Weeks 2 and 3?Giroux shows what education does. Benjamin shows what history does. What does Mbembe add that neither of them can say? Where do they conflict?
Click any card or this button · or press Enter
CRDM 790 · Week 4Hands-On Activity
Activity · 2:00–3:00
Concept Translation Workshop
60 minutes total
1
Share examples — 20 min (2 min each, no interruption)
Each person shares the example they brought from the pre-class prompt. No questions during the sharing — just listen. What is the phenomenon? What is the argument being made about it?
2
Pairs analysis — 10 min → use next slide for timer
In pairs: Take Mbembe's making live / letting die / making die triad and map it onto your partner's example. Which part of the triad does it fit — and does it fit cleanly, or does it strain?
Push each other: Is this actually necropolitical, or is a different framework more useful? Precision matters — Mbembe is making a material claim about sovereignty, not a metaphor.
3
Full group debrief — 20 min → use Slide 7
Where did the concept hold? Where did it strain? What does that tell us about the limits and the power of critical theory? What does a concept have to give up to travel to a new context?
4
Individual writing seed — 5 min
Write one sentence: "Reading Mbembe has shifted / not shifted how I frame my research problem because ___."
Keep this for your Scholarly Identity Statement (due Week 5).
CRDM 790 · Week 4Activity · Step 2
Concept Translation Workshop · Pairs Analysis
Map the triad onto your partner's example
10:00
Ready to start
Making Live

Who does your partner's example invest in? Who is made to flourish — and what does that investment require?

Letting Die

Who is abandoned, exposed, structurally neglected? Not killed — but left in conditions that produce death or precarity.

Making Die

Where does the sovereign exercise of killing appear? Who is targeted, and through what mechanism?

CRDM 790 · Week 4Full Group Debrief
Full Group · 3:00–3:30
Where Did the Concept Hold? Where Did It Strain?
The debrief questions
  • Where did the triad apply cleanly to your partner's example?
  • Where did it strain — where did a different framework feel more precise?
  • What does that tell us about the difference between a concept's power and its limits?
  • What would have to be true of your example for Mbembe to fully describe it?
Facilitation note

Watch for well-meaning appropriation — students applying 'necropolitics' to everything until it loses specificity. Help them stay precise. Mbembe is making a material claim about sovereignty, not a metaphor for "bad things happening."

Individual Writing Seed

"Reading Mbembe has shifted / not shifted how I frame my research problem because ___."

Connecting the vocabulary so far
  • Giroux: Education domesticates or liberates — what you're trained to think
  • Benjamin: History is not past — what you're working in the wreckage of
  • Mbembe: Sovereignty determines who lives — what your research field touches
  • Next week (Brown): The university is the institution where this all happens
CRDM 790 · Week 4Looking Ahead
Before You Leave
Week 5 — and Milestone 1
Reading for Week 5 (Perusall)
  • Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos (Zone Books 2015)
  • Introduction — pp. 7–21
  • Chapter 1 'Undoing Democracy' — pp. 23–62
  • Chapter 6 'Educating Human Capital' — pp. 175–222 — most directly relevant to your situation
Perusall annotation prompt

Find one moment in Brown where you feel implicated — where her argument lands on you, not just on an abstraction. Write an honest annotation. "I feel implicated because ___."

Milestone 1 DUE — Week 5 — Before Class
Scholarly Identity Statement
~500 words · 20% of final grade · Moodle, email, or hard copy
You now have four writing seeds: constellation card (W1), assumption to interrogate (W2), wreckage you're working in (W3), and how Mbembe has shifted your framing (W4). The Scholarly Identity Statement draws on all of these. Write from conviction, not for a committee.
Submission options
  • Moodle upload (PDF, Word, or plain text)
  • Email to kkcole2@ncsu.edu
  • Hard copy before class
CRDM 790 · Movement I · Week 4

Week 4: Who Gets to Live

Sovereignty, death-worlds, and the bodies we study.

Reading: Mbembe, Necropolitics (Perusall) Activity: Concept Translation Workshop
"Sovereignty is the capacity to define who matters and who does not, who is disposable and who is not."— Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics

Session Map

Sovereignty, Death-Worlds, and the Bodies We Study
0:00–0:20
Foucault → Mbembe: where does biopolitics stop short?
Open by establishing what Foucault says about biopower. Then: where does Mbembe say Foucault stops? (pp. 66–68). The extension to death — not just life — is the conceptual move.
0:20–1:10
Core concepts + Palestine analysis
Sovereignty, state of exception, death-world, necropower. The Palestine occupation section (pp. 75–85) gets extended attention — do not avoid it.
1:10–1:45
Students share examples from pre-class prompt
These anchor the abstract argument in something concrete. Be prepared for examples that are graphic or personally resonant.
1:45–2:00
Break
2:00–3:00
Concept Translation Workshop — pairs
Map the making live / letting die / making die triad onto partners' examples. Test where the concept holds and where it strains.
3:00–3:30
Synthesis + Preview Week 5
How does necropolitics sit alongside Giroux and Benjamin? Next week Brown asks what the university does to make this possible.

Reading Guide

Mbembe, Necropolitics · Duke UP 2019, trans. Corcoran
Assigned (Perusall)
  • Introduction — pp. 1–14 (~14 pp.)
  • Chapter 3 'Necropolitics' — pp. 66–92 (~27 pp.) — this is the conceptual core
Discussion Anchor Pages
  • Mbembe on sovereignty and exception — pp. 66–68
  • Colonial occupation of Palestine — pp. 75–85 — most concrete; most politically charged
Pre-Class Writing Prompt (Perusall)

Identify one concept from Mbembe directly applicable to your research area. Write a 3–4 sentence annotation — not just "this relates to power" but what specific mechanism, operating in what you study.

Bring to Class

One example — from media, policy, your archive, or your community — that you think illustrates necropolitical logic. Be ready to put it on the table.

Suggested (Not Required)
  • Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth — Introduction + Preface
  • Christina Sharpe, In the Wake
Making Live

Foucault's biopower — the investment of power in producing life, health, population. Who is supported, cared for, made to flourish.

Letting Die

The withdrawal of support — exposure to death through neglect, abandonment, deprivation. Not active killing, but structural indifference.

Making Die

Mbembe's extension — the direct, sovereign exercise of the right to kill. Who is targeted, eliminated, made to inhabit a death-world.

Guiding Questions

Seminar · 0:20–1:45
1
Mbembe builds on Foucault's biopolitics — not just who is 'made to live' but who is 'let die,' or actively made to die. How does that distinction change how you think about power in your research area?
'Necropolitics' is not a metaphor for Mbembe. It describes actual bodies. Where do you see this logic operating in what you study?
2
What does it mean for humanistic scholarship to 'take seriously the bodies it touches'? What would change in your own project if you foregrounded that?
Not just as a theoretical gesture — but in how you frame your problem, who you cite, what sources you use.
3
Mbembe writes from a specific historical and geographic context. How does that situatedness shape his argument — and what work does that do for you as a reader arriving from a different position?
How do you use a framework built from one context in a different one — without erasing either?
4
How does Mbembe's framework sit alongside or complicate the frameworks from Weeks 2 and 3?
Giroux shows what education does. Benjamin shows what history does. What does Mbembe add that neither of them can say? Where do they conflict?

Activity: Concept Translation Workshop

2:00–3:00 · 60 minutes total
1
Share examples (20 min — 2 min each, no interruption)
Each person shares the example they brought. No questions during sharing — just listen. What is the phenomenon? What is the argument?
2
Pairs analysis (10 min)
In pairs: Take the making live / letting die / making die triad and map it onto your partner's example. Which part fits — and does it fit cleanly, or does it strain?
Push each other: Is this actually necropolitical, or is a different framework more useful? Mbembe is making a material claim about sovereignty, not a metaphor.
→ A 10-minute countdown timer is available in Slide Mode (Slide 6).
3
Full group debrief (20 min)
Where did the concept hold? Where did it strain? What does that tell us about the limits and power of critical theory?
4
Individual writing seed (5 min)
Write one sentence: "Reading Mbembe has shifted / not shifted how I frame my research problem because ___."
Keep this for your Scholarly Identity Statement (due Week 5).

Workshop Timer — Pairs Analysis

Step 2 · Map the triad onto your partner's example
⏱ A 10-minute countdown timer for pairs analysis is available in Slide Mode (Slide 6).
Making Live

Who does your partner's example invest in? Who is made to flourish — and what does that investment require?

Letting Die

Who is abandoned, exposed, structurally neglected? Not killed — but left in conditions that produce death or precarity.

Making Die

Where does the sovereign exercise of killing appear? Who is targeted, and through what mechanism?

Full Group Debrief

3:00–3:30 · Where Did the Concept Hold? Where Did It Strain?
Debrief questions
  • Where did the triad apply cleanly to your partner's example?
  • Where did it strain — where did a different framework feel more precise?
  • What does that tell us about the difference between a concept's power and its limits?
  • What would have to be true of your example for Mbembe to fully describe it?
Vocabulary so far
  • Giroux: Education domesticates or liberates — what you're trained to think
  • Benjamin: History is not past — what you're working in the wreckage of
  • Mbembe: Sovereignty determines who lives — what your field touches
  • Next (Brown): The university is the institution where this all happens
Individual Writing Seed
"Reading Mbembe has shifted / not shifted how I frame my research problem because ___."

Looking Ahead — Week 5 & Milestone 1

Reading for Week 5 (Perusall)
  • Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos (Zone Books 2015)
  • Introduction — pp. 7–21
  • Chapter 1 'Undoing Democracy' — pp. 23–62
  • Chapter 6 'Educating Human Capital' — pp. 175–222 — most directly relevant to your situation
Perusall annotation prompt
  • Find one moment in Brown where you feel implicated — where her argument lands on you, not just on an abstraction. "I feel implicated because ___."
◆ Milestone 1 DUE — Week 5 — Before Class
Scholarly Identity Statement

~500 words · 20% of final grade

You now have four writing seeds: constellation card (W1), assumption to interrogate (W2), wreckage you're working in (W3), and how Mbembe has shifted your framing (W4). Write from conviction, not for a committee.

Submission options
  • Moodle upload (PDF, Word, or plain text)
  • Email to kkcole2@ncsu.edu
  • Hard copy before class