Achille Mbembe’s Computational and Racial Dispositifs

My presentation examines the significance of dispositifs in Achille Mbembe’s work. While he has referred to several dispositifs since writing On the Postcolony (2000), I focus on two: the racial dispositif and the computational dispositif. The first is prominent in his trilogy on racism, colonialism, and decoloniality (On the Postcolony, Critique of Black Reason, and Out of the Dark Night), while the second is essential to his trilogy on globalization and technology (Necropolitics, Brutalism, and The Earthly Community). According to Mbembe, we must choose between the domination of dispositifs or an affirmative biopolitics where life flourishes in community.