Killgrave, The Purple Man

Abstract

Killgrave, The Purple Man, is a supervillain whose powers give him the ability to command extreme obedience to his will. With particular focus on his appearance in the Jessica Jones comics and television series - both of which give slightly different versions of his characterization - this chapter will examine the issue of violence expressed through The Purple Man from the perspective of Michel Foucault, and others, on biopolitics, biopower and control. While he never lived long enough to develop his thoughts on biopolitcs fully, Foucault's lectures on this topic, its relations to and differences from his earlier notions of state violence mediated through bodily discipline, provide an insight into more contemporary technologies of control that have been taken further, most notably, by Giorgio Agamben. On the surface, it appears that Killgrave's powers are a purely personal, sadistic delivery of a quiet violence: one mediated through thought (viruses or pheromones depending on when we read about him) and is manifest only in the performance of his willed acts on those surrounding him. Yet Killgrave's abilities, emanating as so often from a military-techno-scientific accident, align him with a system of biopolitical power that exceeds and yet condenses within his person. In this chapter, we will focus upon how Killgrave's singular, sadistic illustration of his power associate both with Foucault's biopolitics/biopower.