Death, life, and colonial disruption: analysing necropolitics and brutalism from an African perspective

Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics is deeply rooted in Western philosophical traditions, drawing on the works of thinkers such as Foucault, Agamben, Heidegger, Bataille, and Arendt. Similarly, his concept of brutalism is informed by the European architectural movement known as Brutalism. However, when these concepts are examined from an African perspective, it becomes evident that they operate according to a fundamentally different logic and structure. This article argues that necropolitics and brutalism are preceded by what I term necro-metaphysics, which shaped the African experience through three key processes: (1) exteriorisation – the systematic dismantling of ancient African cosmological systems; (2) profanation – their desacralisation and imposition of foreign laws as the new sacred; and (3) post-metaphysical conditioning – the reconfiguration of African societies following these disruptions. The African perspective shows that Mbembe’s theoretical narrative begins in medias res and remains incomplete, as it overlooks the foundational conditions shaping African realities. A close theoretical reading of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were demonstrates that necropolitics and brutalism in Africa emerged only after the dismantling of these metaphysical foundations. The article calls for a rethinking of Mbembe’s theories by incorporating African perspectives.