At a time when a myriad of birth certificates increasingly declare novel ‘turns’ in the modes of thinking and practice of the social sciences and STS, it becomes progressively difficult to know what one is turning from, where one is turning to, and whether the very notion of ‘turning’ has not itself become a means of remaining still while one continues to think in circles. In this sense, one might be left wondering about the implications of a certain biopolitics of objects and concepts at work in the development of social scientific and STS propositions. As Achille Mbembe (2003) has taught us through his incisive reflection on late modern colonial occupations, however, attention to the politics of life must also include questions around the politics of death– biopolitics and necropolitics go hand in hand.… Continue reading