Necropolitics and its Discontents: Art, Mortality and the Political Imagination

Necropolitics and its Discontents addresses the relationship between the contemporary political production of death and the way mortality is figured in contemporary visual practices. This unique volume brings artists and theorists together to examine the complex ways in which mortality intersects with questions of political community, belonging and identity, as explored in contemporary art practice and debate. At a time of unprecedented public violence and refugee crises, Necropolitics and its Discontents addresses the contribution of artistic practices to thinking through the culture of precarity and death that characterises the current historical moment.

The book offers a unique interdisciplinary intervention into current debates on the political and economic instrumentalisation of death, demonstrating the important role of contemporary art in providing alternative images and ideas for the contemporary political imagination. Combining formats such as the visual essay with critical theoretical interventions that draw upon contemporary political philosophy, ethnography, economics and art theory, this volume is an important contribution to understanding the processes shaping contemporary political cultures of death.