The destruction of bodies constitutes the foundational norm of modern political space.

Evidence

My concern is those figures of sovereignty whose central project is not the struggle for autonomy but the generalized instrumentalization of human existence and the material destruction of human bodies and populations. Such figures of sovereignty are far from a piece of prodigious insanity or an expression of a rupture between the impulses and interests of the body and those of the mind. Indeed, they, like the death camps, are what constitute the nomos of the political space in which we still live. Furthermore, contemporary experiences of human destruction suggest that it is possible to develop a reading of politics, sovereignty, and the subject different from the one we inherited from the philosophical discourse of modernity. Instead of considering reason as the truth of the subject, we can look to other foundational categories that are less abstract and more tactile, such as life and death. — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 20

Categorization

• XREF: This anticipates foundational categories of life and death that align with the biopolitics/necropolitics vocabulary the Foundations module is assembling. — connects to: Atomized masses are deliberately fabricated by destroying mediating institutions; State power depends on borrowing the bodies of its subjects — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 695; Apparent cruelty can restore political order and loyalty
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that mass destruction is not madness but the nomos of political space inverts the assumption that violence is a breakdown of politics rather than its constitutive principle.

Broader Connections

• State power depends on borrowing the bodies of its subjects #expands (0.75) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 695
• Apparent cruelty can restore political order and loyalty #complicates (0.72)
• Atomized masses are deliberately fabricated by destroying mediating institutions #complicates (0.70)