Necropolitical Law and the Justification of Violence in the War on Terror

Abstract

This superb study investigates one fundamental question: how does the United States legally justify the killing of people around the world in the battles of the war on terror? By analyzing a series of selected and signi fi cant materials, Jothie Rajah shows how this process of justi fi cation involves a complex interaction of codi fi ed law and nonlegal texts, images, events, and perceptions. The validation of killing and of “ discounting life ” activates a system of “ necropolitical law ” that simultaneously de fi nes a state operation, a legal process, a military strategy, a capitalist enterprise, the articulation of a salvi fi c ideology, a quest for cultural hegemony, and a general form of neocolonial control. As a result of this combination of rationales, law is rede fi ned “ as a compound and relational fabric, with violence and sovereign power inevitably part of the weave ” (5). This fabric expands beyond the conventional sphere of the law and is “ discernible in sovereign power ’ s plural, everyday, and embodied expressions ” (5). Rajah ’ s study is thus not a standard analysis of speci fi c problems of the rule of law. Rather, she approaches necropolitical law as a type of “ cultural text ” (26) that describes the multiple discourses and relations tied in with the US war on terror.