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Book: Resistance to Empire and Militarization

Chapter: 16. Necropolitical Capitalism, the State of Exception and Accumulation by Dispossession

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.40203

Blurb:

Ayotzinapa evokes Auschwitz to talk about modern-day Mexico. This powerful formulation, expressed by Elena Poniatowska, states a parallel but not in the sense of an allegory. It should not be taken lightly. Ayotzinapa is not simply Ayotzinapa; it is the window to an era. It reveals, in all its horror, in the murder of 43 college students, the new configuration that is trampling Mexico: necropolitical capitalism. It discloses the politics of death as the basis for accelerated and decadent forms of accumulation by dispossession. Ayotzinapa has awakened a peculiar protest; the first national struggle against necropolitical capitalism. The chapter critically periodizes Mexico’s history in recent decades, and demonstrates that this is the outcome of an evolution that has passed through the stages of cynical capitalism and narcopolitical capitalism.

Chapter Contributors

  • Luis Arizmendi ([email protected] - larizmendi) 'Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México'