The concept of necropolitics introduced into public debate by Achille Mbembe has been increasingly mobilized to reflect on the forms of violence perpetrated by the State, especially against the poor population and the racial minorities. However, reading Mbembe’s essay demonstrates that more than an unfolding of Foucault’s biopolitics concept – which seeks to explain the specifics of the domination carried out under the aegis of the Modern State –, the idea of necropolitics intends to account for the form with which governmentality and its technologies impose themselves in the face of changes in the way of social reproduction of capitalism, in this case, the changes caused by neoliberalism. Therefore, this text intended to analyze how Mbembe, based on Foucault’s critical reading, conceives the specificity of forms of domination in what he considers to be the neoliberal stage of the capitalist economy.
Necropolitics; Neoliberalism; Biopolitics; State; Racism