Word.ws English Dictionary

necropolitics

necropolitics noun: the relationship between sovereignty and power over life and death.

Noun

necropolitics (uncountable)

  1. The relationship between sovereignty and power over life and death.
    • The idea of a supreme power which monopolizes legitimate violence is as much about limiting and restraining ‘necropolitics’ as it is about engaging in it.2007, Mitchell Dean, chapter 8, in Governing societies: political perspectives on domestic and international rule, →ISBN, page 148
    • Jasbir K. Puar (2007, 2017) has been particularly instrumental in provoking an expanding body of work on queer necropolitics.2021, C.L. Quinan, Kathrin Thiele, editors, Biopolitics, Necropolitics, Cosmopolitics: Feminist and Queer Interventions, Routledge, →ISBN, page 4

Origin of necropolitics

From necro- + politics, coined by Cameroonian philosopher and political scientist Achille Mbembe.

Words formed from necropolitics

Questions about necropolitics

What does necropolitics mean?
Necropolitics means the relationship between sovereignty and power over life and death.
What part of speech is necropolitics?
Necropolitics is a noun.

Words near necropolitics in the dictionary

  1. necropolises
  2. necropolitan
  3. necropolitic
  4. necropolitical
  5. necropolitically
  6. necropolitics
  7. necropost
  8. necroposted
  9. necroposter
  10. necroposters
  11. necroposting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: necropolitics (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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