Wrenched Necropolitical Nexus in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives

Abstract

This embryonic analysis intends to examine the “wrenched necropolitical nexus”, a violent disruption of social and political relations, as portrayed in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives. By utilizing contemporary political theory and philosophical paradigms of Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics, for scrutinizing power, violence, and social control, incorporating Michel Foucault’s conception of bio power to the tactical governance of life and death. A qualitative methodology, textual analysis, mingling investigative and explanatory approaches employs to analytically assess the “wrenched necropolitical nexus”, where the power to dictate death converts paramount. Through the theoretical framework of Mbembe, the study is gauged how state power manifests over the deliberate control and production of death, rendering certain populations ‘the living dead.’ The exploration accentuates appraisal of the nocturnal regimes of power and agency and the bio-to-necro nexus, affectation intuitions into biopolitics, surveillance, and resistance wherein power pulls apart existing structures within the text, prioritizing death over life for targeted groups. The research is bridging the gap by contributing to the indulgent of necropolitics in literature, while addressing a critical gap in scholarship on the juncture of necropolitics, power dynamics, and postcolonial narratives particularly in contexts of colonialism, war, and displacement. The analysis aims to expose in what way power drives to shape individual and collective experiences, essentially in framework striking by colonial violence and conflict.