These texts come together as a braid, entangled and loaded with tension. Instrumentalizing human existence (and demise) like puppeteers (Mbembé, 14), the conquerors mentioned in these readings weave bodies and borders, denying the physical pain of tearing at roots. Most touching were the explorations into “body as place” (Mbembé, 28) and the very ways in which terrains and topographies create identity (Mbembé, 27). The notion of traffic, as discussed by Quijano (185) shows the ways colonized lands must confront “the challenge of transmuting the geography into some intelligible form” (Cuisicanqui). Topographic occupation, devised in the literal tops/brains of human bodies, is thus a main contributor to “symbolics of the top” (Mbembé, 29). Though perhaps in NYC we might call it “penthouse ideology”. Nevertheless, “vertical sovereignty” (Mbembé, 28) and the “vertical articulating logic” (Cuisicanqui) reveal to us the shadow sides of mountains and canyons.

Necropolitics insists on a body-centric attention to politics, hence the departure from theory towards practice. When I look in the mirror, am I wearing, as Cusicanqui calls it, “the straight jacket of the decolonial”? In recognizing that my reflection is not my own (204, Quijano) I might begin a performance of walking backwards. Are you, classmates and teachers, too changing your route to school to avoid walking down a street named after a founding father? Can you promise us that you will never shop at the new Amazon store in SoHo? Has your week also been a contemplation on the “state of exception” (Mbembé, 12) lurking in our Supreme Court?