Necropolitical branding: building communities of pre-emptive violence

ABSTRACT When we talk about the use of military force, the wars we fight, and the justifications we have for fighting them, we reproduce affective structures that inform the communities we build. Discursive practices surrounding the use of military force, like those identifying the protagonists and antagonists constructed by foreign policy, which deaths are deemed worthy of mourning, among others, reinforce frameworks that delineate the meaning of violence and its proper application. In the United States, these discourses typically weave through narratives of redemption that portray the use of military force as necessary, justified, and for the cause of good. In this paper, I argue that the pre-emptive use of military force advocated for in national security discourse is legitimized as acts of justifiable violence by being ‘on brand’ for necropolitical structures that ascribe a redemptive quality to any future uses of military force. Nuancing analyses of war legitimation discourse, this study is an interrogation of the ways in which a necropolitical branding markets the pre-emptive use of military force as a means of achieving peace and security. Ultimately, such an interrogation is an investigation into a source of influence and authority for security discourses to construct the future. Interrogating militarized violence as a consumer brand is valuable for critical analysis because it allows us to engage discourses that inform the communities we build, illuminating the ways in which such violence is reproduced and, in this way, facilitates understandings of how to disrupt and challenge its reproduction.