Achille Mbembe Quotes on Politics
Achille Mbembe is a Cameroonian philosopher and political theorist, professor at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg, and one of the most influential voices in contemporary African and postcolonial thought. This page collects quotes attributed to Achille Mbembe on the topic of politics, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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Attributed to Achille Mbembe:
“Necropolitics is the work of death within the body politic.”
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Attributed to Achille Mbembe:
“The postcolony is a space of intimacy with power, not simply its opposite.”
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Attributed to Achille Mbembe:
“Race is a body of knowledge for converting people into things.”
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Attributed to Achille Mbembe:
“Africa is not a problem to be solved; it is a thought to be thought.”
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Attributed to Achille Mbembe:
“Sovereignty is increasingly defined by the power to decide who may live and who must die.”
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“The ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die.”
Necropolitics," as translated by Libby Meintjes, Public Culture , Volume 15, Number 1, Winter 2003, pp. 11-40