Deathscapes

Manus / Nauru Map 9a

Deathscapes

The Killings: A Sovereign Right to Make Die

‘Under what practical conditions is the right to kill, to allow to live or to expose to death exercised?’  Achille Mbembe, ‘Necropolitics’

‘It seems they will continue to fill their glasses with our blood’  Imran Mohammad, Writer formerly imprisoned on Manus

Australia’s offshore prisons on Manus and Nauru are necropolitical spaces where the sovereign exercises its ‘right to kill, to allow to live or to expose to death’ (Foucault 1986, Mbembe 2003). The killings discussed in this case study include not only cases of murder, but of every form of indirect killing whether through exposure to death, increasing the risk of death, political death or expulsion.


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This research was primarily supported under the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme from 2016-2020.

Partial funding was received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Partnership Development Grants scheme in 2016-2017.

The views expressed herein are those of the named authors and are not necessarily those of the funders.

All content © artists and deathscapes.org, 2017.

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