Chapter 20 - War and Biopolitics

Summary

This chapter situates the work of the German writer W. G. Sebald within Foucault’s paradigm of biopolitical war, which is torn between a concern with State racism and a concern with extinction. Sebald’s work is often considered in relation to World War II and the Holocaust, in other words, in relation to State racism. The chapter seeks to shift this frame of reference toward the Cold War and the reality of Mutually Assured Destruction, which are important concerns in Sebald’s oeuvre as well. This invites us to consider Sebald as an author engaged not only with State racism but also with what Foucault calls “the atomic situation.” Specifically, the chapter considers the use of lists in Sebald’s work not only as a memorial effort in response to the destruction of World War II but also as an effort to record all of life in anticipation of its disappearance. Finally, it shows that such a use of the list exceeds Sebald’s fiction and can be found in a range of related contemporary fiction and theory. Today, in the Anthropocene, the biopolitical war exceeds the issue of State racism and includes that of extinction, human and otherwise – including the extinction of literature itself.