The remarks that follow bear upon the general question of life, sovereignty, and terror. To my mind, life does not exist in-and-of-itself. It does not reflect a generic property per se, but a mode of being-in-the-world, that is, a way of inhabiting the world; in short, a manner of confrontation and familiarity with the world and its full range of potentialities. The ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die. To exercise sovereignty is to exercise control over mortality and to define life as the deployment and manifestation of power.
Achille Mbembé (Mon,) studied this question.