The rush to ‘takes’ is too soon as always. As a scholar of body politics and grievability (amongst other things) I am guilty of having had and tweeted an initial half-formed opinion on the ‘two boats*’ being increasingly scrutinised world-over this week. However, since then – and as the noise around these two ill but unequally fated vessels grew louder – I have not been able to stop myself re-reading and thinking back over some particular texts encountered over the years. These are helping me to think through the politics and (in)visibilities of life, death, and (re/dis)embodiment in the 21st Century. Please now find these compiled below in the case that you too may want to pause for thought as we grapple with questions about bodies that matter, matter differently to different bodies, and possibly don’t matter at all to others.
Ahmed, Sara. 2004. Affective Economies. Social Text.
Auchter, Jessica. 2021. Global Corpse Politics: The Obscenity Taboo, Cambridge University Press.
Brager, Jenna. 12/05/2015. ‘Bodies of Water‘, The New Inquiry
Brand, Dionne. 04/07/2020. ‘Dionne Brand: On narrative, reckoning and the calculus of living and dying‘, Toronto Star
Butler, Judith. 2004. ‘Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence’, New York and London: Verso
Butler, Judith. 2009. ‘Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?’, New York and London, Verso
Edkins, Jenny. 2015. Face Politics. Routledge.
Foucault, Michel. 1984. ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias‘, Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité.
Hyab, Yohannes. 16/06/2023. ‘The Normalisation of Migrant Deaths and Its Implications for Humanity’, Border Criminology
Mbembe, Achille. 2003, ‘Necropolitics,’ Public Culture.
Mbembe, Achille. 24/04/2020. ‘Achille Mbembe: The necropolitics of a pandemic’, Autonomies
*yes I know the second one was technically a submarine
Dr Kandida Purnell 