ABSTRACT
This final chapter zooms out from the previous ones to frame the previous sections of the book within contemporary debates in social theory. In particular, it wades into the discourse on “biopolitics,” associated with Michel Foucault. While he explicitly mentions death over the course of formulating widely cited terms such as “governmentality” and “biopower,” not many thinkers drawing from Foucault and using his conceptual language pay much attention to the place of death in his thought. It is the latter part of the famous formulation “to make live and to let die,” which describes “biopolitics” that this chapter will study-not only within Foucault but also extending to those who have taken his work as a point of departure, including Giorgio Agamben as well as Achille Mbembe, who is responsible for the term “necropolitics” and Robert Esposito, who has coined the term “thanatopolitics.”
