Fighting organized numbness: unpacking necropower and disposability on the margins of (un)learning, (dis)embodiment and (re)orienting

Organized numbness is a learned desensitization and disembodied habituation, the organized inability to perceive sensations, operating in the way our (1) bodies, (2) language, and (3) knowledge are constructed, disciplined and organized, thereby heavily impacting our actions. And if organized numbness is learned—in that it is internalized through rules, socialization mechanisms, writing conventions, and ideological premises—it can also be unlearned. Exploring the tensions of unlearning, of dis-and re-embodiment, and of re-orienting we can push back the margins of isolation, indifferent contempt and the various forms of violence operating through mechanisms of necropower and disposability that permeate many of our organized relations, as illustrated by several key examples. Situating ourselves at these margins (as our chosen place, understood dynamically, as bordering process) fosters our capacity for organizing with and through resonance and ethical relationality to produce a form of knowledge which is not ‘numb’.