Call for Papers

Title of the book: Necrocapitalism and Neoliberal Politics: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Responses in India Publisher: The contract has been signed with Springer Nature

Deadline for submission of full paper: 10 October, 2026

Volume editors:

Abhijit Maity

Assistant Professor, Lady Shri Ram College for Women

University of Delhi, India

Dr. Joydev Maity,

Faculty,

Department of English, Ravenshaw University, India

For any queries, please contact: amengvu@gmail.com or joydevmaity1993@gmail.com

Note: In addition to literary narratives, the editors would prefer to receive and consider submissions based on case studies and visual narratives (especially films).  

Concept Note: This edited volume will focus on the necrocapitalist practices in India, defined as a contemporary form of capitalist accumulation through the imposition of violence, death, and dispossession on a few specific marginalized communities. In postcolonial India, the displacement of the Adivasis, poor, and farmers from their native places in the name of modern development like dams or bridge construction, tourism, or resource extraction in the form of mining can all be listed in the category of necrocapitalist practices. Necrocapitalism focuses on the subjugation of life by creating a ‘death world’ and ‘living dead’, and the concept itself relies on other fundamental arguments like Giorgio Agamben’s ‘state of exception’, ‘bare life’, and Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics. Necrocapitalist practices are sustained through the creation of the ‘state of exception’ in which the rule of law is suspended, and violence can be imposed upon the protesters with impunity. This makes the life of the subjugated people a ‘bare life’, without any legal protection, in which the sovereign decides who will live and who will die. Another key strategy for maintaining necrocapitalist practices is privatizing the military and police, or sometimes a tie-up between the state government and international agencies or companies through which the state represses rebellions. Ironically, development or capitalist accumulation as a result of necrocapitalist dispossession does not benefit in any way the victims, and they are denied even the essentials of life, making their lives what Judith Butler terms ‘precarious life.’ Necrocapitalism is exercised through various types of power, such as material, institutional, and discursive, and through the privatization of the military and police. Sometimes, a tie-up between the state government and international agencies or companies is formed through which the state represses rebellions and their resistance movements.

            The edited volume promises to explore critical discourse on interrelationships between necrocapitalistic practices, neoliberalism, and the notion of crisis in contemporary times. It aims to curate theoretically strong contributions addressing literary and cultural texts and case studies to understand and problematize various forms of power structures that are often destructive and oppressive, yet smoothly operate within and under the neoliberal regime. Major aspects the essays cover include capital extraction, displacement, slow violence, precarious existence, resistance, vulnerable lives, and marginalized voices. In addition to analyzing literary texts, the book also demonstrates how visual texts represent the functioning of the state, leaving individuals/subjects/beings in a sustained condition of living dead.

            This edited volume thus explores necrocapitalistic practices by curating a list of critical essays that not only engage with the nuances of this phenomenon in history but also problematize the contemporary cultural imaginaries. We expect articles authored by renowned as well as early-career researchers, based on genre and thematic coherence, focusing on literary texts, visual narratives (graphic novels or films), and case studies from all across regions, especially from Northeast India, Jharkhand, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, and West Bengal.

This book invites submissions on topics that include but are not limited to:

 Neoliberal politics, Capitalist accumulation and necrocapitalist practices

 Violence, dispossession and death

 ‘Bare life’ and the issue of sovereignty

 Vulnerability and precarity

 Privatization of government and military power

 Resistance movements and the suppression of such movements

 Necropolitics and the ‘death-worlds’

 Modern development and resource extraction

 Marginality and the marginalized bodies

 Environmental and epistemic injustice

 Resistance movements and ‘Environmentalism of the poor’

Submission Guidelines:

Authors are requested to write and submit a full chapter in around 6,000–7,000 words, following the Vancouver Style for references and in-text citations. Prospective contributors are encouraged to contact the editors and discuss potential chapter proposals, if they feel so.