Necropolitics and Contemporary Hungarian Literature and Cinema

In his article "Necropolitics and Contemporary Hungarian Literature and Cinema" Ryan Michael discusses aspects of the concept of necropower (Mbembe) applied to contemporary Hungarian literature and cinema. Kehoe argues that his analysis provides models of postcolonial "aesthetic acts" that disrupt, destabilize, and ultimately subvert the global regimes to which Achille Mbembe refers. Accordingly, Hungary's status as a postcolony is discussed within the context of Steven Totosy de Zepetnek's and David Chioni Moore's contention that the parameters of postcolonial cultural analysis need to be expanded to account for Central and East Europe's transition out of the Soviet sphere of influence. Further, Kehoe incorporates models of "transitology" from the discipline of comparative politics to the study of culture and literature of the region. Through an analysis of two contemporary Hungarian texts - Laszlo Krasznahorkai's novel War and War and Nimrod Antal's film Kontroll - Kehoe analyses narrative strategies at work in not only the interrogation of necropower but also the construction of a politics of resistance.