Bodies in Transit: The Imperial Mechanism of Biopolitics
Abstract
Abstract:
Said’s reflection on the complicities between cultures and imperialisms suggests possible readings of discourses of power in transit through history. The discursive body of the empire evolves applying the mechanism of biopolitics as a way of ordering bodies. This imperial mechanism will be examined in action as a means of controlling life and death through the enumeration of bodies in transit: that of the colonised and of the migrant. This will be done by reading J. M. Coetzee’s The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee (a novel, 1976) and Marco Martinelli’s Rumore di acque (a play, 2010). The applicability of Said’s theory to bodies in transit will not only show the relevance of the ambiguous alliance between culture and empire, but it will also highlight the complex articulations of forms of necropolitcs in late modernity, as Achille Mbembe and others have underlined.
DOI:-
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