Contemporary African politics is a realisation of the fundamentals of the Machiavellian principles about the relations of power, wherein the ‘conqueror’, a government in any guise, exercises control over the governed, to the extent of determining the quality, or even, the necessity of their existence, all determinations and perceptions emerging through shades of biases as are inherent in the ‘prince’ or ‘principalities’, as the case may be. These prejudices may be personalistic, racial, social, cultural, or outlandishly political, in the sense of using governmental leverage to selfishly regulate the trajectory of governance. These Machiavellian proclivities, in some regards, parallel Achille Mbembe’s theoretical constructions about necropolitics, biopower, and biopolitics, these terms an amplification of the desires by powers-that-be to express their despotic, nay, self-obsessed emotions about pulling the levers of power and sovereignty pursuant to eliminating perceived enemies. Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel and Oil on Water are striking literary paradigms that have reverberations of necropolitical dispositions, for the two novels manifest profoundly Achille Mbembe’s conceptual suggestions about “the state of exception and the state of siege” that are symptomatic of a necropolitical situation. Essentially, the paper will discuss how necropolitics and its appurtenances, viz. biopower and biopolitics, shape plot constructions in the two primary works, the revolutionary leaning of the author being their drive and motivation. Theories like Gabriel Marcel’s homo viator and Alfred North Whitehead’s Process, besides necropolitics, will be availed of in the exegesis.

Authors:
Durojaiye Owoeye, University of Lagos, Nigeria

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Durojaiye Kehinde Owoeye is a Senior Lecturer at University of Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria. Dr. Owoeye's research interests are the African novel and associated literary genres. He is currently working on necropolitics in the African novel.

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