Call for Abstracts

The Politics of Life and Death: A One Day Workshop

December 13th

The University of Manchester

In recent years, a number of concepts have been developed in International Politics and beyond to think through the relationship between various forms of power (sovereignty, capital, and so on) and life: disposability, abandonment and expulsion to name only a few. The concepts of biopolitics and necropolitics in particular have become fundamental for understanding the contemporary political management of bodies and populations in a variety of contexts, from Guantanamo Bay to refugee camps, from (post)colonial contexts to areas of resource extraction.

This event makes a space to reflect on this proliferation of concepts by staging a fundamental encounter between the politics of life and death. Its aim is to explore new interactions between sovereignty and modern technologies of power for the management of life and death that work through terror, ecological destruction and social disposability. It also hopes to interrogate new possibilities of governance that question the hegemonic relationship between subjectivity, power and death, patriarchal, imperial-colonial reasoning and violence so as to collectively consider new ways of living.

We welcome all abstracts broadly relating to the theme. Topics may include but at not limited to:

The politics of migration

Logics of disposability, expulsion and abandonment

Investigations of new terrains of biopolitical governance or struggle

Political struggles against necropolitical apparatuses and logics of disposability

Theoretical interrogations of the turn to life and death in International Politics

New expositions of theorists central to discussions of life and death in International Politics.

Abstracts should be no longer than 250 words and should be sent to: [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] for consideration. Deadline for Abstracts: 31^st October

Thank you,

Sabrina Villenave and Kai Heron, University of Manchester