enmity politics

This sequel prequel explores that special relationship that is incessantly extending and reconfiguring on a planetary scale: the antagonistic relationship. Drawing in part on concerns within the field of mental pathology and the political writings of Frantz Fanon, Achille Mpembe shows how in the aftermath of twentieth-century decolonization conflicts, conquest and occupation, terror and its concomitant counterinsurgency terror became the sacrament of our time. On the other hand, this transformation unleashed capricious movements that will push, little by little, liberal democracies to clothe themselves in the clothes of exception, to carry out unconditional actions in distant lands, and to exercise dictatorship over themselves and their enemies.