Joseph-Achille Mbembe was born in 1957 in Cameroon, a country in Central Africa. Mbembe received his PhD from the University of Sorbonne in Paris, France, and a master’s degree in advanced study from Instituts d’études politiques. The acclaimed political theorist, historian, and social critic explores African politics and history, as well as the nature of Western politics and colonialism. The author’s critique of Western politics includes the argument that contemporary governments continue to wield death with impunity even in the modern era.

Mbembe claims that governments do this by marking some groups of people as the Other and condemning them to the worst spaces and living conditions. Residential facilities, prisons, rehabilitation centers, refugee camps, and reservations represent some of these third spaces where states force people to live in ways that Mbembe says are synonymous with death. He traces the history of colonialism in Western political power and how it continues to infuse contemporary governments with racism and violence. Third spaces like those he mentions represent the enactment of necropolitics, in which governments use death as a tool for power and domination. In these spaces, people live in limbo between life and death.