Mbembe opens by establishing his non-Western, African perspective as the foundation for critiquing liberal democracy.

Mbembe introduces democracy as a pharmakon — simultaneously medicine and poison depending on one's position within it.

Drawing on Frantz Fanon, Mbembe establishes that violence and war are the defining hallmarks of democracy.

Mbembe argues that the focus of modern democratic power is death rather than the control of life.

Mbembe identifies the slave trade as the founding moment that fused colonialism and racism into a single system.

Mbembe introduces the 'nocturnal body of democracy' — the hidden shadow side where governments enact violence outside the law.

Mbembe makes the bold claim that no true democracy has ever existed.

Mbembe presents necropolitics as the ultimate expression of sovereign power — the right to determine who lives and dies.

Mbembe introduces 'deathworlds' as states of exception where governments force people to live in conditions resembling death.

Mbembe uses plantation slavery as a model for how states strip certain groups of all legal rights and protections.

Mbembe introduces 'planetary entanglement' as the defining condition of modernity — complex webs that deepen colonial inequality.

Mbembe identifies the capitalist elite as the greatest and most immediate threat to any democratic future.

Mbembe elevates American slavery as the perfect and horrible symbol of democracy's inherent violence and dehumanization.

Mbembe proposes that caring for others is the essential first step toward escaping the oppressive technologies of colonialism.

Mbembe closes with a prayer — 'Oh my body, always make me a man who questions!' — affirming inquiry as resistance.

Mbembe opens from his position as an African scholar to challenge Western liberal democracy, introducing it as a pharmakon that heals some while poisoning others. Drawing on Fanon, he establishes that violence and death — not life — are democracy's true organizing forces, setting up his departure from Foucault. He traces the slave trade as the founding moment when colonialism and racism fused, and exposes democracy's hidden nocturnal violence as the shadow beneath its mythology. Building through Foucault and Agamben, Mbembe develops his concept of deathworlds — spaces where states condemn populations to a life resembling death, outside legal protection. He brings these arguments into the present through planetary entanglement and the threat posed by the capitalist elite. The text closes with American slavery as necropolitics' ultimate symbol and a prayer affirming that questioning everything is the only path forward.

The core arc of Mbembe's necropolitics thesis.

Mbembe compares postcolonial governments to bodies whose skeleton is built entirely from terror and violence.

Mbembe argues that the same fear that catalyzed colonialism's violence continues to drive brutality in the modern age.

Mbembe identifies four defining characteristics of the contemporary political landscape, including militarism, capitalism, and mass repopulation.

Mbembe shows how massive global population movements have eroded singular national identity and deeply complicated belonging.

Mbembe argues that the rise of technology has erased any meaningful distinction between human beings and machines.

Mbembe examines Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories as a contemporary model of total surveillance and domination.

Mbembe explains that the desire for apartheid grows from the colonial-era repeopling of the world and fear of loss.

Mbembe identifies racism as the primary mechanism of demarcation that separates the controller from the controlled in Foucault's biopower.

Mbembe cites Nazi gas chambers as the historical culmination of industrialized dehumanization and state-directed mass death.

Mbembe notes that racial control persisted after slavery's abolition through anti-miscegenation laws and forced sterilization programs.

Mbembe introduces a 'matrix of rules' as a democratic tool of contraction that operates beyond and beneath physical walls.

Mbembe uses refugee camps, Nazi camps, and Gaza to show how modern blockades function as inherited colonialist tools of control.

Mbembe applies a historicist lens beginning with WWI as the global fracturing that shaped modern expressions of colonial power.

Mbembe critiques humanism as a repackaged form of colonial individualism that continues to devalue marginalized lives.

Mbembe warns that democracies are not finished and will continue finding new ways to enact power and expand deathworlds.

Mbembe frames his argument by likening postcolonial governments to bodies whose skeleton is terror, and explains how the fear that once powered colonial violence still drives modern brutality. He identifies four characteristics of the contemporary political landscape — repopulation, the redefinition of humanity, rising technology, and hidden democratic violence — as markers of democracy's departure from its own ideals. Through the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Nazi gas chambers, and the racial controls that persisted after slavery's abolition, Mbembe grounds necropolitics in concrete historical states of exception. He introduces the matrix of rules and physical blockades as modern adaptations of colonialist tools, showing how apartheid transforms rather than disappears. WWI becomes the historicist anchor for understanding how contemporary forms of power took shape. The work closes by critiquing humanism as colonialism repackaged and warning that democracies will continue inventing new deathworlds.

The historical examples and supporting arguments that ground necropolitics.

Mbembe challenges Foucault's biopower, arguing that sovereign states never stopped exercising control over death — they only concealed it.

Mbembe uses the politics of space — how democracies move and group populations — to frame necropolitics in modern contexts.

Mbembe argues that colonialism has itself become a technology governments actively deploy to control, move, and oppress populations.

Mbembe argues that global population growth has shifted focus from individual rights to humanity's collective role within a larger ecology.

Mbembe reveals that democratic societies deliberately create the Other as an enemy whose death affirms and sustains the hero's life.

Mbembe connects apartheid to religious zealotry, arguing that the contemporary age dangerously conflates knowledge with belief.

Mbembe introduces nanoracism — hidden, pervasive racism embedded in everyday life that normalizes and perpetuates ongoing colonial violence.

Mbembe draws on Agamben's state of exception to show how governments manufacture spaces where the rule of law is fully suspended.

Mbembe examines Heidegger's concept of technology as both a physical instrument and a way of thinking that constrains human freedom.

Mbembe warns that nihilism, as a mode of social criticism, guarantees the continued oppression of marginalized groups by offering no solutions.

Mbembe shifts focus to examine the deep psychological damage that persistent racism and democratic violence inflict on colonized populations.

Mbembe critiques Europe for positioning itself as the default 'zero point of orientation' for all of humanity and civilization.

Mbembe argues that the quantification of human bodies through data collection represents a new and intimate mechanism of colonial violence.

Mbembe rejects both Afrocentrism and Afropessimism in favor of an Afrofuturist approach focused on solutions, healing, and hope.

Mbembe encourages Fanon's decolonization practice by urging people to recognize the crucial difference between inhabiting and truly belonging to a place.

Mbembe's central revelation is that Foucault's biopower stops short — sovereign states never truly relinquished control over death, they merely concealed it within colonial structures. He develops the politics of space and colonialism-as-technology to expose how the movement and grouping of populations reproduces necropolitics in every era. Two further turning points emerge: nanoracism as the hidden everyday form of colonial violence, and the Other as a mythological enemy that democratic states require to justify their own existence. Mbembe then pivots sharply to the psychological dimension through Fanon, revealing how persistent racism wounds the colonized mind and how Europe enshrined itself as civilization's universal default. The final revelations concern the future: data emerges as a new instrument of violence, nihilist and Afropessimist frameworks are rejected for blocking progress, and decolonization is reframed as the act of distinguishing where one lives from where one truly belongs.