Date of Award

Summer 8-7-2024

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

MA English

Department

English

Advisor

Simone James Alexander, PhD

Committee Member

Muhammad Farooq, PhD

Keywords

Necropolitics, Palestine, West Bank, Israel, Colonization, Decolonization

Abstract

Achille Mbembe’s seminal work Necropolitics explains how the ultimate power of sovereignty is not exercised as Michel Foucault asserts in his theory of biopower in life over death, but rather in relegating certain populations to deathworlds, a place between the living and the dead. For over half of a century, Israel has illegally occupied both the West Bank and Gaza and exerted almost total control over the territories. It controls infrastructure such as roads, building permits, and water rights while also regulating the freedom of movement of Palestinians within and outside the West Bank's borders in addition to various other restrictions that essentially exile Palestinians of the territories to deathworlds. Arabs in these territories are confined to specific areas within their own territory, judged for minor infractions in military court, and killed at will, reducing their existence to a living death. My thesis will examine the ways in which Israel, in its continued and expanding occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, with a particular focus on the former, exercises this display of sovereignty over in consigning Palestinians to death worlds. It will look at the ways various political structures and policies place Arabs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) in the position of homo sacer and consign them to death worlds, thereby simultaneously displaying Israel’s ultimate sovereignty over this discriminated class of people, according to Mbembe’s theory of Necropolitics, while also producing a link of enmity between the two peoples. It will then explore the means of resistance available to Palestinians as well as future areas of study regarding the issue.

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