Refusing Necropolitics in St. John and in Palestine: Unearthing Stories of Land Dispossession, Desire and the Will to Live

In this text we extend Mbembe’s notion of necropolitics to theorize and make visible the deep entanglements of subjectivities and geography—people, communities and land—particularly for those dispossessed by racial capitalism, white supremacy, Zionism. We enflesh, through deep looks at lands stolen on St. John and in Palestine, what Sheehi and Sheehi (Psychoanalysis under occupation: practicing resistance in Palestine. Routledge, 2021) call the “will to live,” the human desire to return, refuse and reclaim, as a critical project of decolonization. We call on critical psychology to re-place people in land, in struggle and in history and refuse to extract people from their homelands, stolen or occupied.