Trust, bordering and necro-racism
Soundings - ISSN 1362-6620
Volume 2024 Number 88
Trust, bordering and necro-racism
Nira Yuval-Davis pages 19‑28
DOI: 10.3898/SOUN:88.01.2024
Abstract
Nation states rely on identifications that allow people to trust in their constructed imagined communities. However, current disenchantment with nation states is fuelling alternative, autochthonic, projects of belonging, which focus on maintaining borders and are indifferent to the fate of those who do not belong. This indifference exposes countless Others to the risk and practice of death through necro-racism. Racism has traditionally been based on a named ‘Other’ collectivity which is conceived of as an existential danger for the physical or social/economic/cultural existence of the collective ‘us’, but there is another logic - a necro logic - in which the ‘Other’ has no name, no identity, no visibility, and thus no entitlement for life, let alone any other human rights. As Achilles Mbembe has argued, racialisation in its different forms has been the underlying distributive principle of racial capitalism, not only of resources but also of the right to life and ‘grievable deaths’. A politics of care is a necessary counter position to this necro-racism.
To cite this article
Nira Yuval-Davis (2024) Trust, bordering and necro-racism, Soundings, 2024(88), 19-28 . https://doi.org/10.3898/SOUN:88.01.2024