Theorizing Necropolitics in Social Studies

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Seventeen
  In Roundtable Session: UnSettling Social Studies: Difficult Knowledge and (Post)Colonial Legacies (Table 6)

Abstract

This paper engages with three specific depictions of death commonly found in social studies—death and violence during the French Revolution, death and violence in the Vietnam War, and death and violence of marginalized peoples—through the lens of Achille Mbembe’s (2003, 2019) necropolitics (i.e., political/social machinations of power that determine who lives and who dies). In particular, we theorize how specific necropolitical concepts (e.g., the living dead, and slow death [Berlant, 2007]) can be a generative and powerful form of analysis for social studies educators and their students that exposes intersecting complexities between life, death, political alliance, and power.

Authors

• Bretton A. Varga, California State University - Chico
  Presenting Author

• Mark Helmsing, George Mason University
  Presenting Author

• Cathryn van Kessel, Texas Christian University
  Presenting Author

• Rebecca C. Christ, Florida International University
  Presenting Author