I approached “Necropolitics,” by Achille Mbembe, with both
anticipation and dread—and soon found myself conflating the two, reading the
article with anticipatory dread. The theme, proposed in the very first line,
that the “ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the
power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die,” introduced me
to a new concept—necropolitics—but triggered familiar reactions of horror as
the author recounted the historical nightmares of slavery and the Holocaust,
and then continued, detailing the current renditions of ongoing atrocities in Palestine
and Africa [11]. In all accounts, a sovereign power (wearing many masks) is/was the
inflictor of torment on Other. I wondered as I read: could disease—and the
frequent end result of disease, death—ever be thought of as the sovereign power
that Mbembe worries about in this paradigm; could disease cause “the generalized instrumentalization of human
existence and the material destruction of human bodies and populations? [author’s
italics, 14]” And, if yes, could ‘Other’ mean all of us?
My thoughts weren’t idle. Death as pursuer is a prevailing
theme of the primary novel I have chosen to investigate for the class. Pale Horse, Pale Rider, by Katherine Anne
Porter, anthropomorphizes death in the traditional Christian biblical mode, as
the pale horse saddled by a pale horseman who rides along with three other
horses and riders (one pair clad all in red, symbolizing War; one in black,
representing Famine; one in white, bearing Pestilence;) collectively, they are
known as the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ in the New Testament’s final
entry, the “Book of Revelation of Jesus Christ to St. John”. Many Christians
consider “Revelations” to be the harbinger of the End of Times and Porter
adopts this stance as she inflicts her protagonist, Miranda, with the deadly influenza
virus that ricocheted around the globe in 1918.
Mbembe’s discussion of Georges Bataille’s ‘critical
insights’ furthered my ponderings. Bataille, in his first interpretation of
death and sovereignty, says that, “life is defective only when death has taken
it hostage. Life itself exists only in bursts and in exchange with death" [15]. Pale Horse, Pale Rider is a litany of
‘bursts and exchanges’ with death as Miranda repeatedly fights to beat the
infectious disease that overtakes her at a near perfect time in her life: new
job, new beau, her world not yet intimately impacted by the Great War raging
overseas. Death holds her hostage in a comatose, fever-ravaged body, until Miranda,
in her dream-like stupor, imagines extricating herself from the situation,
outrunning the pale horse and its rider on her own steed, Graylie:
Come now, Graylie, she said, taking
his bridle, we must outrun Death and the Devil. […] The stranger [Death] swung
into his saddle beside her, leaned far towards her and regarded her without
meaning, the blank still stare of mindless malice that makes no threats and can
bid its time. She drew Graylie around sharply, urged him to run. […] The
stranger rode beside her, easily, lightly, his reins loss in his half-closed
hand, straight and elegant in dark shabby garments that flapped upon his bones;
his pale face in an evil trance, he did not glance at her. Ah, I have seen this
fellow before, I know this man if I could place him. He is no stranger to me.
She pulled Graylie up, rose in her
stirrups, and shouted, I’m not going with you this time—ride on! [Porter 142]
Porter concludes Pale
Horse with Miranda surviving the disease and overcoming death. Mbembe
concludes his article summarizing his thesis: “contemporary forms of
subjugation of life to the power of death (necropolitics) profoundly
reconfigure the relations among resistance, sacrifice, and terror” [39]. While
Mbembe is referring to subjugation caused by contemporary techno-weapons
designed to inflict maximum pain with maximum human psychological insult, one
could safely postulate, I believe, that the current Ebola pandemic (or one of its
fellow deadly viruses waiting in the wings for the next biologically-willing
vector) is capable of becoming a virulent ‘power of death,’ wreaking political,
economic, social, and psychological havoc on an unsuspecting—and
unprepared—world. It is not that far of a stretch to believe that uncontained disease
can be one of the subjugations Mbembe envisions in which “vast populations are
subjected to life conferring on them the status of living dead” [40]. Not that far of a stretch indeed—just turn on the
evening news tonight.
I like your connections between disease and death in "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" and the technologies of warfare and death in Mbembe's article. I wonder if you could conflate them by talking about disease as biological warfare? I'm actually really surprised that this doesn't come up in Mbembe's article, considering the impact that disease has had on warfare continuously since antiquity. Biological warfare is still an issue today--the anthrax attacks in 2001 reminded us of how dangerous biological warfare is, and the US government consistently researches to what extent other countries may have biological warfare capabilities. Anyway, do you think there a way of viewing the 1918 influenza as biological warfare? Did either side utilize the epidemic in their war strategy, even if they didn't cause it directly?
ReplyDeleteAveryl, your comments were my exact ruminations as I read Mbeme. Biological warfare (and its sibling, chemical warfare) is very real. We've seen recent incidents of at least chemical warfare in Syria, and both agents are undoubtedly being considered today by governments--and rogue factions--for deployment at least somewhere in the world. I'm also surprised Mbembe didn't include these 'weapons' in his list. But, I expect if he ever revises this essay, he will.
ReplyDeleteWe are most likely on the cusp of experiencing a biological attack or an inadvertent leak of bio agents caused by mishandling at supposed sites of containment (witness the recent discovery of smallpox samples in an unlocked room at the CDC.) One of the worries that kept the lid on nuclear weapons during the Cold War was the knowledge that the entire world could be affected by a full-fledge release of nukes. A threat of a nuclear winter scared countries enough to moderate the possibility of using such weapons. I'm hopeful that such restraint is still at work and that any country considering the use of biological weapons must be anticipating that the agent will eventually boomerang back into their world. What worries me most are rogue groups who care not what happens to them or their families in THIS world because they are waiting for their reward in the NEXT. We'll have to hope that any agent they manage to acquire will be of limited scope.
As for the 1918 Influenza, there does not appear to be any evidence of which I am aware that the virus was intentionally released. Instead, it materialized mainly at the end of WWI, brought, it is now believed, from exposed troops initially stationed in Kansas who returned to the European theater with the disease. As the war wound down, the infection rate of influenza ramped up. Troops dispersed to all areas of the globe, taking the disease with them. GIven the rate of global travel at that time (essentially none,) had WWI not been in play and had international troops not been mobilized in poor conditions in a relative small area of the world, it is highly unlikely this influenza would have risen to pandemic level. Our world now is highly mobile--hence the greater risk from Ebola and similar viruses that can now be transported almost anywhere in the world in a matter of hours, thanks to commercial air travel. A whole different ballgame ...
This is of course what you're gesturing to in your post, but beyond just reading pandemic itself as a sovereign necropolitical power, I also wonder what we would open up or discover by reading our reactions to said pandemics as militarized. I can definitely see how the feelings evoked (or provoked) by news coverage and government handling of the spread of Ebola are very much tied to militarization and war-waging.
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