Yoga, War and Necropolitics: The Weaponization of Yoga toward Ideologies of Fascism & Death

Building on Achille Mbembe’s concept of “necropolitics,” this roundtable considers the various historical, colonial, and contemporary appropriations of yoga toward a “politics of death” (Mbembe 2003). Focusing both on yoga as spiritual philosophy and yoga as a psychophysical practice, the panelists in this roundtable interrogate how governmental institutions and far-right movements use yoga in varying ways to advance state and political power and dictate how certain populations become destined for life and others become destined for death and structural violence. Together panelists explore broader topics of yoga as power, the Western white supremacy to conspirituality pipeline, the "Make America Healthy Again" movement, yoga diplomacy, necropolitical individualism, Zionist appropriations of omwashing, and Brahmanical Hindutva to show how powerful political actors instrumentalize components of yogic practices, meditations, and spiritual philosophies as weapons against oppressed people and, ultimately, themselves.