Sovereign Destruction: On Life and Death in Politics

Viki Mladenova

doi:10.25038/am.v0i18.299

Authors

Viki Mladenova

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i18.299

Keywords:

necropolitics, horrorism, violence, sovereignty, multitude

Abstract

Achille Mbembe and Adriana Cavarero offer two very profound neologisms –necropolitics and horrorism – that can equip one with a better understanding of life and death in the modern political community or sovereign unit (as in the case of the nation-state). If one goes through the rupture of thinking modern sovereignty following the Foucaultian inversion of war as the continuation of politics by other means, the place of violence is inevitable. What is considered as sovereign order in the same time is the place that was violently occupied, upon which was decided that will represent the constitution of power and the rule of a figure that in modern perspective is the rule of body politic i.e. of the sovereign. Thus, what was emphasized as a concern regarding modern sovereign rule opting towards material destruction of human bodies and populations, most certainly helps to explain contemporary political violence. Also what else is recognized are all other forms of war, all its extensions in every political community, since what war bears is not always and only terror, it is horror above all as an even more profound and at the same time excessive violence that spreads over war scenes.

Article received: December 3, 2018; Article accepted: January 23, 2019; Published online: April 15, 2019; Original scholarly paper

How to cite this article: Mladenova, Viki. "Sovereign Destruction: On Life and Death in Politics." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 18 (2019): 9–16. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i18.299

Author Biography

Viki Mladenova

L'Orientale University in Naples
Italy

Viki Mladenova (1991) is a PhD student at L’Orientale University in Naples, Italy at the Department of Studi Internazionali. She graduated at the Faculty of Law “Iustinianus Priums” – Skopje, Macedonia (Ss. Cyril and Methodius University), at the department of Political Science, and at the same faculty continued her master studies of International Law and Relations. After graduation and in the period November (2017) – April (2018), with a scholarship from the Italian Ministry for foreign affairs was in Pisa at Scuola Normale Superiore for a research stay, under supervision of prof. Roberto Esposito. In the period of 2014–2017 she worked at the Macedonian Helsinki Committee for human rights, ending this professional experience with terrain work on Macedonian borders during the period of the Balkan Route. Now is working on the projects Critical Re-examination of Law and Refugee Law Clinic as a research-assistant.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i18.299 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i18.299