Theorizing necroptics: Invisibilization of violence and death-worlds

Abstract

This paper examines the invisibilization of violence and deaths in India’s leading daily during the 1918 influenza pandemic, the Times of India. The pandemic killed more than 14 million Indians in a short span of time. Studying this historical event and the way it was reported in an influential newspaper, this research shows how media representations not only invisibilized the alarming levels of mortality, but also elided the efforts of colonial capitalism to profit from the loss of human life. Building on the work of Achille Mbembe, and through the concept of necroptics, this study examines the invisibility of violence as malign neglect that contributes to death-worlds. It shows how colonial violence was erased or mystified through media necroptics, which created untraceable deaths, that is, framed deaths as natural or systemic outcomes.