The productivity of necropolitics

Abstract. The following text responds to the ongoing debate on the widespread violence in Latin America, claiming the existence of a necropolitical mode of production that is constituted through an entanglement of expropriation and dual exploitation. This entanglement demonstrates that necropolitics entails an expropriative power that leads to direct exploitation through labouring with expropriated bodies, whose destruction generates the order within which surplus value is extracted. Under necropolitics, the human body becomes one of postcolonial capitalism's last frontiers. In the following, the target of violence – that is, the subject – no longer serves as a bearer of labour power but becomes part of the production process itself in the form of constant capital. Violence turns into necropolitical labour. This shift is significant to analyse in the context of the transitions occurring within capitalism. The article is based on fieldwork conducted in Mexico's postcolonial context and contributes to a materialist analysis of necropolitics.