Towards a necropolitics of sport: the case of Palestine

The objective of this paper is to advance a necropolitics of sport, utilising Palestine as an entry point. We address this conceptualisation by identifying and interpreting how Palestinian sport infrastructures, spaces and bodies are governed, targeted and managed by colonial apparatus and occupational forces, which include sport institutions, organisations and clubs. Based on our tracings, we argue that the assemblages of systematic, material and symbolic violence enacted by these forces represents two interconnected processes: the necropoliticalisation of sporting life and the sportification of necropolitical life. We identify and trace these processes through two necropolitical structures: (1) the territorialisation of sport in occupied Palestine; and (2) the cartographic and aerial targeting of Palestinian sporting and playing bodies. These structures – reproduced and normalised within and by imperialist sport institutions, infrastructures and agendas well before 7 October 2023 – target the embodied, spatial, temporal, affective and communal practices of Palestinian sporting cultures, communities and bodies. As such, we argue that it is the very humanising potential and futurities of sport and play – which position the Palestinian moving body as a form of resilience and resistance to conditions of political death – that make it a mandatory target of necropolitical governance.