In the interview, Achille Mbembe reflects on the issues of colonialism and post-colonialism, post-socialism, and the future of humanity in the age of new technologies. The concept of “Necropolitics” from his seminal essay published in 2003 is also discussed. In that essay, Mbembe argued that Foucault’s notion of biopolitics falls short in explaining the contemporary forms of subjugation of life, and instead proposed the notion of politics based on death which, in turn, structures both the notions of sovereignty and the political. Mbembe has often argued that the academic and popular discourses on Africa are full of clichés, Western fantasies and fears. However, Africa as we know it today did not even exist before the 19th century.
