27. ANCIENT NECROPOLITCS: POLITICIZING DEATH AND THE DEAD IN ANCIENT GREECE
Panel Convenors
Marion Meyer (University of Vienna) [marion.meyer@univie.ac.at]
Efimia Karakantza (University of Patras) [karakantza@upatras.gr
Alexandros Velaoras (PhD candidate, University of Patras) [lit3355@upnet.gr]
Necropolitics is a fairly new concept, first defined in 2003 by postcolonial political thinker Achille Mbembe, resting heavily on the Foucauldian notions of biopolitics. So far, these concepts have been used in the discussion of contemporary politics by Political Scientists and Social Anthropologists exploring the politicisation of death and the treatment of the dead bodies in a way targeting the dishonouring, disciplining, and punishment of the living. Although Classicists’ interest in death has always been keen, the concepts of biopolitics and necropolitics have not been applied in the study of ancient Greek culture yet. The purpose of this panel is to approach Greek Antiquity through the conceptual lens of necropolitics in order to explore the political dimension death had already acquired. We firmly believe that this will shed new light on Greek Antiquity and lead to fresh political readings.
Theoretical Considerations: Tracing the Emergence of Necropolitics
The politicization of death and its transformation into the object of power in Modernity has been theorized as a response to the theory on the politicization of life by Foucault, who introduced the concepts of biopolitics and biopower to refer to the sovereign’s power over life and death (History of Sexuality, vol. 1, 1976; Society Must Be Defended, 1997). Originally exercised on individuals, this power was later (since the 19th century) exercised on larger populations by the sovereign power controlling the processes of birth, death, reproduction, illness and so on. Thus, these processes become “biopolitics’ first objects of knowledge and the targets it seeks to control” (1997: 242-243). Building on Foucault, philosopher Giorgio Agamben extends the discussion on the production of a biopolitical body as the primary activity of sovereign power and explains how biopolitics turns into thanatopolitics, how, in other words, the sovereign’s decision on life becomes a decision on death (Homo Sacer, 1995).
The term “necropolitics” was defined by postcolonial theorist Achille Mbembe in a seminal article (“Necropolitics”, Public Culture 15, 2003), informed by Foucault and Agamben, as “the subjugation of life to the power of death” (2003: 39). This concept is used to account for contemporary forms of this subjugation in late-modern cases of war, resistance and the fight against terror, when “weapons are deployed in the interest of maximum destruction of persons and the creation of death-worlds, new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead” (2003: 40). If Foucault’s biopolitics concentrated on life, Mbembe’s necropolitics has a clear focus on death and destruction. In such modern-war contexts, and in a similar frame of mind, Judith Butler also reflects on the livability of life and the grievability of death (Precarious Life, 2004; Frames of War, 2009).
Finally, political theorist Banu Bargu recently extended Mbembe’s definition of necropolitical violence to “refer to an entire ensemble of diverse practices that target the dead as surrogate for, and means of, targeting the living”:
In distinction from other forms of death-making, I use necropolitical violence to denote those acts that target the dead bodies of those killed in armed conflict, by way of their mutilation, dismemberment, denuding, desecration, dragging, and public display, the destruction of local cemeteries and other sacred spaces that are designated for communication with and commemoration of the dead, the delay, interruption, or suspension of the conduct of funerary rituals, the imposition of mass or anonymous internment, the pressure for clandestine internment, and the repression and dispersion of funeral processions for the newly dead. At issue is not the reduction of the living to “the status of living dead,” but something else altogether: the dishonoring, disciplining, and punishment of the living through the utilization of the dead as postmortem objects and sites of violence (“Another Necropolitics”, Theory and Event 19, 2016 – our emphasis).
Tracing Necropolitics in Ancient Greece
The emergence of biopolitics and necropolitics is situated by the aforementioned theorists in the modern era and it may at first seem only too natural that these concepts have fruitfully been used by Political Scientists and Anthropologists for the discussion of contemporary politics. Classicists’ interest in death has always been keen; it therefore comes as a surprise that a simple keyword search on L’Année philologique does not produce any results as it reveals that the concepts of biopolitics and necropolitics have yet to be applied in the study of ancient Greek culture. Still, they could shed new light on it and they could lead to fresh political readings of Greek Antiquity. (The only record turning up is Jesse Weiner (2015), “Between ‘bios’ and ‘zoē’: Sophocles’ Antigone and Agamben’s biopolitics”, Λογεῖον 5, 139-160.)
It may at first appear that the burial of the dead in Antiquity was essentially an individual and private affair, an obligation of the family and the next of kin, with intensive involvement of the female members. However, at the same time it was highly political in the etymological sense of the word: burials were affairs of the polis not just the oikos as evidenced by the laws which Greek poleis passed to meticulously regulate those aspects of the burial that caught public attention.
Eventually, in certain cases the state instead of the family might take over altogether. Mass graves, attested from the 8th century BCE, might be an honour for those who died in a war or on a mission for their polis; on the other hand, they might be evidence of “humiliated and insulted dead” (conspirators or traitors, as a recent find in Faliron, Athens suggests; D. Bosnakis, Humiliated and Insulted Dead, forthcoming). In the early 5th century, the Athenians introduced the state burial for the war dead. Those who had fallen for Athens were brought back home and buried outside the city gates; they were honoured by an epitaphios logos and a monument that listed every single name (N.T. Arrington, Ashes, Images and Memories, 2015). The demos thus appropriated a traditional privilege of the oikoi and defined who was worthy of commemoration. At the same time private tomb monuments ceased to exist, probably due to a luxury law. Then, from ca. 430 to ca. 310 BCE, private grave reliefs were erected in great quantities, a phenomenon that still awaits a conclusive interpretation.
Pertinent examples from historiography and literature also abound. Thucydides’ Histories, for instance, is rich in examples of necropolitical violence: the Boeotians’ refusal to return the dead Athenians for burial after the battle at Delium (424 BCE) (considered to be the historical antecedent of Euripides’ Suppliant Women); the siege of Melos in 416 BCE resulting in the mass execution of the male population and the enslavement of women and children as well as the similar case of the first decision of the Athenian assembly regarding the dissent of Mytilene (428 BCE). The case of the Samian trierarchs and marines who were executed in the Samian War of 438 BCE (the single source is Douris of Samos, recorded by Plutarch in the Life of Pericles 28.2 = FGrH76 F 67) is also interesting. Although its historicity has been disputed, it clearly attests to the political dimension death had acquired in the collective imaginary.
In literature, Achilles’ desecration of Hector’s dead body in the Iliad; the heated debate between the Atreids and Teucros about the burial of Ajax in Sophocles’ Ajax; Creon’s edict forbidding Polyneices’ burial in Sophocles’ Antigone (and its rewriting in later versions of Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes and Euripides’ Phoenician Women); the Thebans’ refusal to return the corpses of the dead Argives to their mothers for burial in Euripides’ Suppliant Women are among the most famous cases in point.
In conclusion, it appears that dead bodies and the ceremonies and rituals surrounding them were felt to be endowed with political power which could have various effects on the polis and which therefore became the polis’ objects of control. This necropower could strengthen the bonds between citizens or be socially disruptive or even serve as a preventive or disciplinary means for the living. That is precisely why the polis – and in particular hegemonic Athens – strove to keep it under its sway.
The purpose of this panel is to invite contributions from the fields of Classics, History, Archaeology, Social Anthropology, Political and Social Sciences discussing various aspects of death through the conceptual lens of necropolitics/necropower:
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burial practices and ideologies
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politics and technologies of lamentation
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gender-related necropolitical violence
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honourable and dishonourable (mass) burials
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commemoration of the dead (interests and regulations)
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diverging interests behind the ceremonies and monuments (public/private; male/ female; status groups)
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the maltreatment of corpses
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denial or withholding of burial to traitors and other categories of dead
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(non)grievable lives
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“humiliated and insulted dead”
In sum, any aspect which could be considered as exertion of political power on the dead.
Suggestions for further topics are welcome.
We ask for contributions in English. In order to provide enough time for discussion, your paper should not exceed 20 minutes.
Please send your proposal, including an abstract of 250 words, to the organizers of the panel (marion.meyer@univie.ac.at , karakantza@upatras.gr and lit3355@upnet.gr ) by September 30, 2020. Don’t forget to include your affiliation. You will hear from us very soon after that date.
Abstracts should have:
- Title of communication
- University
- Abstracts (max 250 words)
- Keywords (5 to 10 words)