Necropolitics and American Hype-Power

In a 2009 essay titled “Hyper-Power or Hype-Power,” Tim Luke prompted us to think about American foreign policy and national security as being in the process of transitioning from hyper-power to something Luke called “hype-power.” Luke sought to explore the extent to which post-Cold War American hyper-power was the product of and, in a way, becoming increasingly indistinguishable from hyped-up displays of might and prowess in the sphere of security and international affairs.

What Luke did not address but cannot be ignored is the relationship between hype-power and death or death making, that is to say, modalities of power and violence, whether hard or soft, that often amount to putting bodies to death and, sometimes, through various means and methods, to a proliferation of dead bodies. To put it differently, if we go along with Luke’s provocative argument about hype, a question that needs to be asked is: what modes or regimes of necro-power—a power premised on killing and putting to death—correspond to today’s US hype-power?