Conceptualizing 'Necropoetics': A Cultural Materialist Reading of Necroeconomy in Nisha Patel's "432-615-719-1827-?"

Abstract

With every passing decade of late- capitalism, the world economy is gradually entering into a “new space of capital that profits in killing and death, not to produce commodities but as the commodity itself- a necroeconomy” (Haskaj 2). Unlike the Foucauldian biopolitics, in this “economy of death” (Haskaj 16), the loss of human life is never seen as the loss of capital; instead, an alternative production of necro-capital which not only quantifies human death but also ‘monetizes’ it. Consequently, the shadow line between ‘letting die’ and ‘making die’ gets increasingly blurred and obfuscated (Smith 63). Thus, disposable ‘death subjects’ are politically manufactured whose biological vulnerability and economic value (for the necroeconomy) are proportionately entangled. In other words, necroeconomy thrives on expendable ‘necrotariats’ whose lives matter fundamentally “in their negation” (Haskaj 1). But what happens when a poem ontologically emulates the “economy of death” (Haskaj 16) and continuously thrives on cadavers? Can it (the poem) be seen as a living paradox of protest surviving on human death? That’s what this paper will explore by reading closely Nisha Patel’s poem- “432-615- 719-1827-?”. Drawing on contemporary necro-theorists like Mbembe, Fatmir Haskaj, Roberto Esposito, and so on, this paper will explore how the Covid-economy at its peak also became the economy of death and disposability. Finally, the paper will also look into different connotations of ‘death’ in this poem, where death does not merely refer to the physical death of Covid bodies but also to the meta-physical death of trust and faith in the existing socio-political order.