Necropolitics in the “Compassionate” City: Care/Brutality in San Francisco

In San Francisco in the United States, the urban precariat is governed simultaneously by two logics of intervention that are highly contradictory: compassion and brutality. In this article, I explore the contours of violence embedded in humanitarian governance for unstably housed/homeless women who use drugs as they navigate care systems for their health and well-being. I use Mbembe's concept of necropolitics to examine how women embody an anticipation of death, at the same time as they manage their risk for actual death in engagements with care in a city paradoxically known for its progressive, compassionate principles of intervention for those who are most marginalized.