State racism frames killing others as purifying one’s own race

Evidence

To divide up the world between the civilized and the uncivilized according to a line of descent requires a racially delineated community of ‘original’ citizens, a ‘volk’ constituted against foreigners. Foucault has argued that the modern state, in constituting itself as sovereign and as having the power over life, requires racism. Racism enables us to live with the murderous function of the state and to understand the killing of Others as a way of purifying and regenerating one’s own race: ‘The fact that the other dies does not mean simply that I live in the sense that his death guarantees my safety; the death of the other, the death of the bad race, of the inferior race (or the degenerate, or the abnormal) is something that will make life in general healthier: healthier and purer.’ — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 41

Categorization

• XREF: Foucault’s biopolitics and state racism connects to the sacrifice/sacral-kingship themes in the ‘On Sacrifice’ article — killing as purification of the collective body. — connects to: Racial framing decides which killers get mythologized versus executed by police — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1751
• DEEPTHINKING: Foucault’s claim that sovereignty + biopower structurally requires racism to make state killing morally comfortable is dense and paradigm-shifting on how liberal states justify violence.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 41