necropower

Etymology

From necro- + power.

necropower means power over life and death, or over deadly activities and products such as assassination, weapons, the death penalty, etc. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 88 out of 100.

Why this word is great

NECROPOWER — [Noun] The sovereign capacity to dictate mortality, to decide who may live and who must die through political violence, warfare, or state-sanctioned killing. From the combining form necro- (from Greek νεκρός (nekrós), meaning "dead body, corpse") + power (from Anglo-Norman poer, meaning "ability, strength, authority"). Unlike "biopower," which administers and optimizes life through regimes of health and reproduction, or "authority," which implies a legitimized right to command, necropower is the brutal, foundational logic of the sovereign exception. It is the checkpoint where papers are checked against a list, the drone strike that delineates a kill-box from a living room, and the bureaucratic warmth of a hand stamping execution orders by lamplight—the dark inverse of politics: not the art of the possible, but the calculus of the expendable.

noun

Power over life and death, or over deadly activities and products such as assassination, weapons, the death penalty, etc.“The portrayal in Kontroll of the underground space of the Budapest subway system as a site of potential resistance against the multiple manifestations of necropower, […]”