Necropolitics Covered

Teaching death ritual during states of emergency: Centering death positivity, anti-racism, grief, & ritual

Abstract: This article examines the challenges and opportunities of teaching an online university seminar on Death Rituals in the midst of several domestic and global crises, including: the COVID-19 pandemic; the massive uprising for Black Lives and against police homicides of unarmed Black individuals; and the climate crisis. In light of these ongoing emergencies, as well as increased cultural attention to their structural intersections, this article makes the case for radical inter and trans disciplinarity when teaching about death and dying. Specifically, the article calls for incorporating death positive and anti-racist pedagogies, while also making space for grief and ritual on both experiential and theoretical levels. The article first provides an overview of the dominant disciplinary frameworks for teaching about death and dying, followed by a description of the author’s personal stakes as well as the political context of the course. Next is a summary of the author’s guiding pedagogical, theoretical, and philosophical frameworks, with examples of how they were operationalized in the course’s design and delivery. The article concludes with a reflexive assessment of this class and provides suggestions for future teaching in death and dying. Citation: Lerum, K. A. (2021) ‘Teaching death ritual during states of emergency: Centering death positivity, anti-racism, grief, & ritual’, Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 20(1), pp. 40–62. doi: 10.1080/15505170.2021.1964114. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The Right to Hide? Anti-Surveillance Camouflage and the Aestheticization of Resistance

Monahan, T. (2015) ‘The Right to Hide? Anti-Surveillance Camouflage and the Aestheticization of Resistance’, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 12(2), pp. 159–178. doi: 10.1080/14791420.2015.1006646. Abstract: There has been a recent surge in artistic designs to conceal oneself from ambient surveillance in public places. These center on the masking of identity to undermine technological efforts to fix someone as a unique entity apart from the crowd. Ranging from fractal face paint and hairstyles, to realistic resin masks, to reflective underwear, anti-surveillance camouflage ostensibly allows people to hide in plain sight. These designs, however, enact an aestheticization of resistance premised on individual avoidance rather than meaningful challenge to the violent and discriminatory logics of surveillance societies. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Resistance to settler colonialism in Palestine through tourism: the case of Kairos ‘Come and See’, Palestine

Isaac, R. K. and Hall, M. C. (2025) ‘Resistance to settler colonialism in Palestine through tourism: the case of Kairos ‘Come and See’, Palestine’, Settler Colonial Studies, 15(4), pp. 706–725. doi: 10.1080/2201473X.2025.2485532. Abstract: Settler colonialism has been theorised as a form of oppression and domination distinct from other colonisation and imperialism processes. This paper aims to deconstruct settler colonialism domination by illuminating both the power of oppression and the power of resistance in Palestine and in the establishment by Israel of settler colonial tourismscapes. Building on Foucault’s examination of power and resistance, settler colonialism is theorised as a disciplinary, bio-power, and sovereign power, and the paper explores how different stakeholders resist the dominant settler discourse in a tourism context. Theoretically, this study contributes to understanding settler colonialism and tourism through the lens of power and resistance. The outcomes of the study find that Israel has contributed to the reorganisation of Palestine as a Jewish homeland and suppress stories of colonial brutality and oppression while selling imaginary geographies that normalise the presence of Jewish settlers in Palestine. Findings also shed some light on how Palestinian tourism initiatives, such as the Kairos Palestine in Bethlehem, produce spaces of constructed Palestinian visibility through tourism. This initiative highlights how alternative tours through the ‘Come and See’ experience might contribute to the re-articulation and reordering of venues, thereby forming a counter-discourse and resistance. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Hard labour and punitive welfare: the unemployed body at work in participatory performance

Bartley, S. (2017) ‘Hard labour and punitive welfare: the unemployed body at work in participatory performance’, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 22(1), pp. 62–75. doi: 10.1080/13569783.2016.1263559. Abstract: This article addresses the performance of labour in participatory arts projects and considers the implications of such activity on perceptions of the unemployed in the UK. Utilising a combination of biopolitical and necropolitical understandings of governance and drawing on two examples of theatre practice, Tangled Feet’s One Million (2013) and Helix Arts' MindFULL (2013), I propose that participatory performance deploys bodily strategies to disrupt the construction of the unemployed in political rhetoric. As such, in a context of austerity, I argue this arts practice can function to support the agency of participants in challenging policy and seeking to re-establish the status of subjecthood to their precarious bodies. Additionally, I posit that specificities of the unemployed as a participant group illuminate broader complexities around value exchange within participatory arts practice. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Inappropriate/d bodies: Reorganizing the terms of life and death

Rodríguez, L. C. (2020) ‘Inappropriate/d bodies: Reorganizing the terms of life and death’, Death Studies, 44(11), pp. 727–735. doi: 10.1080/07481187.2020.1771854. Abstract: This introduction to the Queer Death Studies special issue explores an emerging transdisciplinary field of research. This field critically, (self-)reflexively and affirmatively investigates and challenges conventional normativities, assumptions, expectations, and regimes of truths that are brought to life and made evident by current planetary scale necropolitics and its framing of death, dying and mourning in the contemporary world. It is set against the background of traditional engagements with the question of death, often grounded in Western hegemonic and normative ideas of dying, dead and mourning subjects and bodies, on the one hand; and on the other contemporary discourses on human and nonhuman death and extinction, directly linked to the environmental crisis, capitalist and post/colonial extractivist necropolitics, material and symbolic violence, oppression and inequalities, and socio-economic, political and ecological unsustainabilities. By bringing together conceptual and analytical tools grounded in feminist materialisms and feminist theorising broadly speaking, queer theory and decolonial critique, the contributions in this special issue strive to advance queerfeminist methodologies and ontological, ethical and political understandings that critically and creatively attend to the problem of death, dying and mourning in the current environmental, cultural, and socio-political contexts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]