DOI: https://doi.org/10.36719/2706-6185/47/91-96
Abderrahmane Laheg
Kasdi Merbah University-Ouargla, Algeria
https://orcid.org/0009-0000-7315-1967
abderrahmane.laheg.edu@gmail.com
Necropolitics of the Zone of Nonbeing in the Selected Writing by Tsitsi
Dangarembga and Ray Bradbury
Abstract
In the imperial epoch, social practices of division, classification and differentiation are more than often adopted by sovereignties as means for maintaining absolute authority and solidifying racial discrimination. Binaries such as ‘us’ and ‘them’, colonizer and colonized, and master and slave are usually the blueprints of extremist ideological doctrines. Following literary narratives through different contact zones, as that in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s The Book of Not and Bradbury Ray’s short story “Way in the Middle of the Air”, a recurring motif of racialized abnegation and annihilation could be discerned. Be it slavery or colonization, Black subjects are entangled in an inevitable neurosis. A simultaneous revision of the theoretical framework of Frantz Fanon and Mbembe Achilles highlights a relevance between two conceptions, which are the zone of nonbeing and necropolitics. Whilst the first term describes the atmosphere that engulfs the existence of Black people who co-exist with White supremacists, necropolitics as introduced by Mbebe explains and distinguishes the mechanisms that manipulate and relegate Black people into this zone of nonbeing. Rereading both fictional works through such a lens foregrounds the imperial autocratic rules manipulating death zones.
Keywords: abnegation, colonization, contact zones, necropolitics, non-being, slavery