Race becomes the terrain where states wage a politics of life and death.

Evidence

In these approaches, the body is an important site as an abstraction on which to exert multiple forms of modern state power. In the traditional sense, the sovereign is the supreme and ultimate ruler of all domains of life—for that matter, of life itself (Rose 2006). To link biopower and the regulation of life and death to the body, Foucault (2003) importantly turns to the ideas of race and racism—and ultimately, race war—as a history of the nation form. Biopower in this sense is the theater from which race becomes the terrain of a politics of life and death. This interpellation is important in the modern framework that names the threats that must be eliminated to maintain life and sovereign power. The site of such state warfare is the racialized body that represents specific enemies, threats, dangers. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 765

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains Foucault’s biopower as the frame through which race becomes a politics of naming threats to be eliminated.
• XREF: Connects to the sovereignty-death-structure theme from Agamben’s state of exception and the ‘On Sacrifice’ article on legitimated killing.