Life, Death, And Power: A Necropolitical Reading of Carmilla

Abstract
This paper offers a necropolitical reading of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla
(1872), situating the novella within the theoretical framework proposed by Achille Mbembe.
Necropolitics, as an extension of Michel Foucault’s biopolitics, examines the ways in which
sovereign power determines who may live and who must die. Through this lens, Carmilla
emerges not merely as a Gothic vampire tale but as a complex narrative that interrogates
authority, control over bodies, and the liminal space between life and death.
The vampire Carmilla embodies a form of subversive agency that resists patriarchal
and imperial structures, while simultaneously existing as a figure subjected to violent
eradication by those same systems of power. The novella’s depiction of disease, contagion,
and female desire further complicates its necropolitical dimensions, revealing how bodiesespecially
female bodies- become sites of regulation and annihilation. By examining the
interplay of life, death, and authority in Carmilla, this paper argues that Le Fanu’s work
anticipates modern concerns about governance, marginality, and the politics of death,
positioning the vampire as both a victim and an agent within necropolitical regimes.
Keywords
Necropolitics, Gothic Literature, Vampire Fiction, Power, Death, Female Body, Achille
Mbembe, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla, Biopolitics