Introduction

Since the genesis of films and television, disabled individuals have been marred by inaccurate and stereotypical representations (Darke 200:100). Haunting visuals of a pirate with a missing eye, hand or leg and the archetypical anti-hero with prosthetic arms and legs have been associated with malevolence and sin, perpetuating the notion that their disability is the tragic outcome of their moral depravity (Donnelly 2016). Television and media have a significant impact on societal representation, as they perpetuate stereotypes with far-fetched consequences, causing serious problems when observers are only exposed to these biased discourses (Ross 2019). These crude and one-dimensional images largely affect how society views disability. Shakespeare states,

“The use of disability as a character trait, plot device, or atmosphere is a lazy shortcut. These representations are not accurate or fair reflections of the experience of disabled people. Such stereotypes reinforce negative attitudes towards disabled people and ignorance about the nature of the disability” (1999:165).

Although disability affects people of all backgrounds, persons with additional marginalised identities or those at the intersection, such as women, people of colour, or those from specific classes, experience intersecting forms of discrimination (Tina et al. 2015:77-78) (Hill Collins and Bilge 2016) (Kowitz 2022). For the black disabled community, this means confronting both racism and ableism. A notable example of this is the eugenics programme, which “promoted themselves openly and proudly in terms of a twinned racist and ableist imaginary” (Reynolds 2022:59). Chris Bell states that there is a dearth of representation of coloured people within the disability community, and he acknowledges the white nature of disability studies. Thus, whiteness becomes an essential prerequisite for a disability identity. Chris Bell, in his Introducing White Disability Studies, says,

“White Disability Studies, while not wholeheartedly excluding people of colour from its critique, by and large focuses on the work of white individuals and is itself largely produced by a corps of white scholars and activists. White Disability Studies envisions nothing ill-advised with this leaning because it is innocently done and far too difficult to remedy” (2006:275).

Since disability has always assumed a white identity, the only place to draw comparisons between the separate categories of race and disability is from a white (disabled) person’s perspective (Grillo and Wildman 1991). This historical focus on the experiences of white individuals within the disability rights movements has led to a whitewashed field that neglects the way people of colour experience disability. This whitewashing “actively re/make(s) oppression and inequality” (Gillborn 2015:280). Viewing disability through a black lens, shows that black disabled individuals experience a double minority identity stemming from both their race and disability. Some black individuals choose to conceal their disability due to fear of further discrimination because being black and visibly disabled may instigate a moral panic among both disabled and non-disabled individuals across different racial backgrounds (Templeton 2024). By not acknowledging the presence of black disability, an impression is formed that only white disability exists and only they need to be empowered. Thus, it is necessary to implement effective strategies that consider the intersecting challenges faced by black individuals with disabilities and disseminate their stories and experiences. The paper aims to expound on the dehumanisation of black individuals with disabilities through the practice of necropolitics—a form of power that determines who may live and who is subjected to conditions of death (2003). In wielding such power, the state ultimately reduces the lives of black disabled individuals to zoē, bare life that is stripped of political and social value (1998).

Agamben, in his Sovereign Power and Bare Life, draws a distinction between two categories of recognition of life within society: bios and zoē. Bios refers to the ‘qualified form of life’ (1998:109), while zoē refers to individuals excluded from the domain of political being and only recognised as biological beings (1998:8). Any demonisation and ostracization means reducing individuals from bios to the level of zoē. Agamben draws the concept of unworthy, politically irrelevant life or the zoē, from debates on euthanasia and the treatment of people with mental and physical disabilities (1998:140-142). However, the politically irrelevant zoē can be perpetually extended in the contemporary context. Several critical disability theorists attribute the exclusion of these groups to capitalist production that doesn’t deem them useful for labour (Russell and Rosenthal 2019), resulting in their marginalisation and elimination. Additionally, in society, people decide who is valuable and worthy based on an individual’s appearance or their capacity to effectively “produce, excel and behave” (Lewis 2019). Here, the state’s impulse to not merely allow for a natural death but to actively facilitate it is evident in the two films.

Mbembe builds upon Foucault’s concept of Biopolitics to introduce Necropolitics, which is the state’s “capacity to define who matters and who does not, who is disposable and who is not” (2019:80). Necropolitics, unlike bio and thanatopolitics, deals with “subjugation of life to the power of death” and has been instrumental in some of the most terrible atrocities of the twentieth century (2019:92). It begins with the creation of a ‘society of enmity’ through hate movements, separation, hostility and struggle against an enemy (2019:42) culminating in the desire for their extermination. Racism (and Ableism), operate as mechanisms that determine and regulate the necropolitical order and “make possible the murderous functions of the state” (2003:17). The anti-black racists devise a plethora of industrialised and dehumanising methods of inflicting death, including economic deprivation, domestic police brutality, military intervention and prisons, with minimal resistance from the victims (Mbembe 2003:17). He explains ‘death-in-life’ as the phenomenon in which a zoē is kept alive but in an injured state due to “triple loss: loss of a ‘home’, loss of rights over his or her body and loss of political status. This triple loss is identical with absolute domination, natal alienation, and social death” (2003:21). These groups are reduced to a state of bare life, with their labour and life as tools for optimising others’ livelihoods. To Mbembe, “the calculus of life passes through the death of the Other,” where the demise of a vulnerable individual becomes the cost of another’s survival (2003:18).

The concept of necropolitics prompts a revaluation of modern democracy, which, on the surface, espouses values of freedom and equality but, in reality, is blatant political calculus (2019:16). Mbembe argues that the legal system shields a few of its citizens and is weaponised against the rest (2019:). In such instances, the value ascribed to an individual’s life is often influenced by their proximity to dominant power centres. Those closer to axes of privilege are usually perceived to have greater worth, while those situated further away may find their existence more precarious (Bourdieu 1986). Subsequently, migrants, refugees, and the lives of brown, black, indigenous, and disabled people are in a ‘state of exception,’ which signifies a temporary suspension of the law, allowing the state to hold unquestioned authority (Agamben 2000:38). Necropower opens up the possibility of ‘death-worlds,’ which is “new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to living conditions that confer upon them the status of the living dead” (2019:92). In essence, modern democracy is no different from the tyrants of the past; it merely gives rise to novel forms of injustice.

In the contemporary discourse, a necropolitical exploration provides a real-world dimension of active necropolitics within modern power structures. Systems such as neo-colonialism, capitalism, ableism, racism, and more dictate the parameters of disposability within a society (Mbembe 2019). Such an exploration not only identifies death-worlds but also highlights their normalisation within social frameworks. Eventually, it reveals forms of resistance, survival, and care for those rendered disposable (2019:176). Paul Farmer (2015), a medical anthropologist, elaborates on a biopolitical and necropolitical continuum, stating that certain necropolitical manifestations don’t necessitate overt violence; rather, they are perpetuated through inaction, which allows certain individuals to die. While Mbembe elaborates on the forms of death in necropolitics, Lauren Berlant (2007) has examined on the concept of slow death, which is deliberate, slow, and cumulative. In the field of black disability studies, necropolitics serves as a critical lens to investigate how systems of power, namely racism and ableism, converge to mark the black disabled individual as disposable through systemic and active neglect. This framework is essential for identifying the life-and-death experiences of black disabled individuals to understand their complex reality.

In recent times, the intersection of race and disability has been highlighted in academic discourses. Ato Quayson (2007) says that the different equity-seeking groups like women, disabled people, aboriginals, dalits, and coloured people’s struggle for representation coincide. Such people gain their identity only through the gaze of the white, able-bodied, posing a problem to the aesthetic reception. Khalil Gibran Muhammad (2010) notes that budding social scientists associated racist claims that high tendencies for criminality among black people are due to their mental, moral and physical (in)capacities. During the eugenics period, Du Bois (2014) identifies how race and disability are linked in white supremacist ideologies, which generates a scientific basis that justifies the social subordination of black people. Harris (2021) adds a new dimension to the study of race and disability by framing aesthetic theories of discrimination, which provide a valuable framework for examining race and disability as intersecting areas of study and as diagnostic tools to understand how society constructs and exploits disability and racial markers. Harris emphasises the importance and necessity of collecting and sharing intersectional public data. Morgan (2023) argues that both race and disability are social constructions, and the social meanings of race have a significant impact on influencing the social meanings of disability and vice versa. Similarly, Friedman (2023) says that BIPOC with intellectual and developmental disabilities, living in more ableist and racist regions of the United States, have a lower quality of life, irrespective of their demographics. Templeton (2024) introduces the black disability threat theory, in which individuals who are visibly black and disabled cause a moral panic among both disabled and nondisabled white individuals.

In the necropolitical context, Threadcraft (2017) examines how necropolitics operates within the scope of black femicide, critically analysing how gender intersects with state-sanctioned violence. Threadcraft emphasises activists’ strategies to systematically confront official narratives that devalue black lives. Moving further away from black femicide is Caesar et al. (2022), who engage with the concept of black maternal necropolitics and examine the narratives of black mothers: the loss of their children to police brutality, their grief and loss into political action, and the continual affirmation of the worth of their child’s life. Ajari (2022) focuses on the habituation to loss and premature death as a prerequisite feature of black experience. He discusses the concept of dignity within black radicalism and its significance in resisting necropolitical structures. In a similar vein, Procknow (2024) critiques the state’s role in medically assisted dying for individuals with mental disorders. By using Mbembe’s necropolitics framework, Procknow argues that these policies entangle psychiatric individuals in death-making practices, underscoring the ethical complexities inherent in psychiatric euthanasia. Nevertheless, there has been little consideration of the susceptibility of black individuals with disability as victims of necropolitics and the resulting state-inflicted violence on them.

The discrimination due to issues related to race, disability, and their intersections persists despite growing awareness in American society and government (Friedman 2023). The paper sheds light on the depiction of black individuals with disabilities as a monstrous “other” and their violent erasure within film narratives. While there has been significant research on the oppression of individuals with disabilities, the specific oppression faced by people of colour with disabilities has been largely overlooked, particularly within the context of film representations. This raises the following questions: How do the films depict black disabled bodies as scapegoats in the justice system? At what point does an individual’s life become politically irrelevant and consequently eradicated? How is blackness weaponized in the films to justify state-sanctioned violence against disabled individuals? In addressing these questions, this article focuses on how necropolitics causes modern nation-states to render some of their people expendable by analysing John Coffey and Herbert Richardson in the films The Green Mile and Just Mercy. However, this paper is limited as it solely examines blackness in conjunction with male disability while neglecting individuals who are marginalised further by factors such as gender or class in addition to their disability.

Death as salvation for John Coffey in The Green Mile

The Green Mile, a 1999 film directed by Frank Darabont, is an adaptation of Stephen King’s 1996 novel of the same name. The story is set in the 1930s and narrates the tale of John Coffey, a black protagonist in a predominantly white cast. Coffey is a black inmate of the ‘E’ block of Cold Mountain Penitentiary prison and is recognised as having an intellectual disability, which limits certain cognitive functions and skills. He is wrongfully accused of rape and murder of two young white girls, Kathe and Cora and is sentenced to death. Examining Coffey’s life provides insights into the workings of necropolitics and reveals how his race, along with his disability, contributes to his tragic end.

The film begins with John Coffey being introduced as a ‘dead man’, underscoring his sealed fate of capital punishment at the end. Mr. Edgecomb, the prison warden, initially encounters Coffey and remarks that a childlike imbecile has been sent to the Green Mile (the place where inmates who face the death penalty are housed). Throughout the film, the white characters use terms like ‘strange’ and ‘retarded’ to describe Coffey due to his peculiar behaviour. His imposing physical presence and muscular stature starkly contrasts with his infantilised demeanour. Despite Mr. Edgecomb’s observation, “He is strange, I admit. But there doesn’t seem to be any real violence in him,” Coffey is not given the chance to prove his innocence within the state’s legal system.

As a black man, he tries to survive the blatant racism of his time and finds himself in trouble when he enters the white man’s space. To convict him guilty, Coffey’s defence lawyer comments,

“We had us a dog…Well, in many ways, a good mongrel dog is like a Negro. You get to know it. Often, you get to love it. It is of no particular use but you keep it around because you think it loves you. If you’re lucky, Mr. Edgecomb, you never have to find out any different. My wife and I were not so lucky… That dog attacked my boy for no reason. Just got it in his mind one day. The same with John Coffey…Is Coffey guilty? Yes, he is.”

This disturbing comparison, which likens Coffey to a dog and implies his guilt based on baseless accusations, appears convincing to the white characters in the film due to the defendant’s race and cognitive limitations. To Fanon, “Whoever says rape says Negro” (1952:166). The film’s portrayal of the instinct of a black man as that of a dog, along with the ‘hyper-sexuality’ and ‘black buck’ stereotypes that are usually associated with his race (Castle and Harris 2016), adds to his vulnerability as an easy target for the crime. Despite no clear evidence, the jury assumes a certainty of guilt and imprisons him. Even within the prison walls, the white prisoners do not see Coffey as an equal. Percy, a co-prisoner, says, “Niggers ought to have their own electric chair. White men ought not to sit in no nigger electric chair,” expressing the racist condition apparent at the time.

In the climax, knowing that Coffey is innocent, Mr. Edgecomb offers to secretly release Coffey from prison, but Coffey chooses to stay and face execution in the electric chair as a convicted murderer, rather than attempt to clear his name. Coffey articulates this suicidal decision, saying,

“I’m tired, boss. Tired of bein’ on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. Tired of not ever having me a buddy to be with, or tell me where we’s coming from or going to, or why. Mostly I’m tired of people being ugly to each other.”

Coffey’s profound weariness of existing as a black disabled man leads him to prefer death over life. Although it may seem like Coffey has brought this fate upon himself, the death-like state in which he is forced to live, due to the blatant racism and ableism of his time, makes death a preferable alternative to life.

It is not Coffey’s disability but the white man’s space that suffers from the illness of pervasive racism and ableism, leading to his tragic demise at the climax of the film (Reynolds 2022:50). Perlin, in Mental Disability and the Death Penalty: The Shame of the States, observes that individuals with cognitive disabilities are more likely to face the death penalty than neurotypical people (Perlin 2013). People with disabilities often become easy targets for the state, and those who are both racially marginalised and disabled are even more likely to be discarded as zoē. In such a context, where the state is rife with ableist and racist dictums, John Coffey’s disability doubles back on him because of multiple forms of marginalisation. The film also shows that the white man’s space deems black disabled men as a tool for optimising the former’s livelihood. It shows multiple instances where Coffey serves white men, despite the visible harm it causes to his health. Coffey is also deprived of a political identity and is entirely subject to the authority of the sovereign power. He did not even have a lawyer to advocate for his cause. The white man’s space is depicted as a domain for the state’s use of violence where only the white, wealthy, able-bodied man is the politically privileged bios, robbing others of their humanity and kept alive but in a ‘state of injury’ (Mbembe 2003 21).

Applying Mbembe’s idea of the ‘death-in-life’, Coffey undergoes a “triple loss: loss of a ‘home’, loss of rights over his or her body and loss of political status” (2003: 21), effectively reducing him to an animalistic state. Exiled from his own homeland and denied the privileges of ‘home’, Coffey finds himself in a state of disempowerment. The whipped scars and marks on his body symbolise a denial of ownership over his own body, confining him to a subhuman position and stripping him of any political standing. Coffey exists in a death-like state with his sole purpose being to serve the white community. His supernatural healing ability makes him repeatedly save others from their anguish and troubles, prioritising the needs of the white community rather than his own (Glenn and Cunningham 2009:144). Necropolitics serves as a framework that critically examines mundane institutional practices such as racism and ableism, which sustain power dynamics (Mbembe 2003) and lead to death in the context of Coffey. His existence is reduced to a condition of ‘death-in-life’, where he lives in constant fear of death, with no power or opportunity to defend himself. By the film’s end, Coffey faces the electric chair and meets his end.

For any powerful group to deem another group worthy of erasure, they must strip them of their bios and reduce them to zoē (Agamben 1998). Likewise, in John Coffey’s case, instead of being treated for his disability or being defended for his innocence, he is marginalised due to his race and victimised due to his disability that made him incapable of defending his cause. It is through this intersecting lens that we understand John Coffey as a victim of necropolitical aggression, a result of the inherent unfairness of the state’s legal frameworks and the dynamics of power and oppression prevalent within the societal structure.

Herbert Richardson between justice and death in Just Mercy

Just Mercy (2019), directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, depicts attorney Bryan Stevenson’s efforts to advocate for numerous African American men who have been unjustly convicted of murder and face the death penalty. The film is an adaptation of Bryan Stevenson’s, 2014 memoir, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, highlighting the epistemic injustice towards the economically downtrodden black community. Herbert Richardson, one of the prisoners, is a Vietnam War veteran grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychological illnesses. The film features glimpses of his breakdowns, and Walter McMillian, his fellow inmate, assists him with visual and breathing exercises as a treatment for his sudden anxiety attacks. Despite Stevenson’s repeated appeals to spare Richardson, he is ultimately sentenced to capital punishment for his (unintentional) involvement in a girl’s death.

PTSD is formally recognised as a disability by the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) and the Veterans Affairs (VA), yet Richardson’s condition was overlooked and remained untreated. According to Stevenson, Richardson’s experience in the war troubled and traumatised him, but upon his return home, he was not given the necessary care. Richardson was so crippled by the disorder that he struggled to speak and suffered from sudden mental breakdowns, nightmares, and unexplained ‘crying spells’, and his condition only worsened over the years. His disability was also ignored during the court hearings, and appropriate care was not provided to him in prison. This denial of his mental disability shows a complete failure of the state to understand how it can affect the individual’s decision-making abilities. Joel Michael Reynolds in Disability and White Supremacy, says

“For decades, people with intellectual disabilities in particular have been incarcerated in jails and prisons than treated in hospitals or other medical facilities by a factor of at least three, returning us to the explicit practices of institutionalization from the 1840s onward. This also returns us to the routine criminalization of multiple types of intellectual disability as they intersect with practices and ideologies of racialization. Keeping this intersection in mind, people with disabilities in the United States are two and a half times as likely to experience violence than nondisabled people, and people with cognitive disabilities are significantly more likely to face the death penalty than neurotypical people” (2022: 49).

The intersection of Richardson’s disability, race and economic status made him an easy target for criminalisation in the justice system.

Individuals from the black community who have other invisible disabilities choose not to disclose their disability out of fear of further marginalisation (Templeton 2024).

According to Curry,

“because the Black male body is confined to the realm of terror—a living corporeal horror—I argue the recognition of intellectual disability by white onlookers is subsumed by white fear. In other words, disability in the Black male is unrecognizable by whites because of a very real racial anxiety” (2017: 324).

Additionally, Chris Bell highlights,

“White Disability Studies treats people of color as if they were white people; as if there are no critical exigencies involved in being people of color that might necessitate these individuals understanding and negotiating disability in a different way from their white counterparts” (2006: 282).

Richardson’s complex position at the intersection of race and disability within a predominantly white setting heightened his vulnerability, and exposure to death .

Richardson lives in a state of exception where despite constitutional prohibitions against capital punishment for individuals with intellectual disability (Atkins v. Virginia 2002), the laws are manipulated, subjecting Richardson to death penalty. The state reduced his financial and medical support and cut him off from social and educational structures, subjecting him to a ‘death-in-life’ state. His rights were suspended, and his identity was taken away to better exert control over him. As a US war veteran, Richardson had dutifully served his country, but he was ultimately put to death when he was deemed no longer useful. In the prison cell, “the politics of cruelty and the symbolism of profanity, get blurred” (Mbembe 2019: 76). The spectacle during the death of Richardson was to assure the citizens that the enemy’s physical death is warranted and leads to the formation of the ‘societies of separation’ and ‘society of enmity’ (Mbembe 2019:42). These ‘enemies of civilisation’ (Mbembe 2019: 53) are seen as enemies of the government and the state; thus, they are disposable to a nation.

Power positions like doctors, police, judges or any such institution operate in a state of exception where they decide who qualifies for life and who doesn’t without it being considered a homicide. The sovereign power suspends the law when they are dealing with those who are deemed to be Homo Sacer (Agamben 1998). The democratic reign, on the surface, might seem to control and minimise brutality and physical violence, but to Mbembe, violence is not wiped out; it remains the ‘nocturnal body’ (2019: 22) of democracy. It coexists with violence, and sovereign power might not be present as apparent dictators and kings but takes up subtle forms that need to be recognised. Thus, democracy isn’t very different from the totalitarian regimes that existed in the past.

The film highlights how laws and policies exploit stereotypes about black criminality and racial fears while also overlooking their impacts on individuals with disabilities. Although the film only highlights Richardson’s disability, the memoir upon which it is based delves into the experiences of other mentally disabled black inmates, such as Horace Dunkins, Trina Garnett, and Joe Sullivan (Stevenson 2014). This points to the systematic exploitation of people of colour with disabilities. These individuals, despite coming from the African American community, represent a distinct subset within it—the disabled African American community. This sheds light on the challenges faced by the nation’s vulnerable citizens who are incarcerated due to systemic racism, socioeconomic disparities, and disabilities in the hands of the state’s unfair justice system. Herbert Richardson ultimately meets his fate at the electric chair despite numerous efforts and pleas by Stevenson. Throughout his trial, he is not seen as a man who bravely served his nation, but rather as a Homo Sacer—an outsider and a black disabled individual, unfairly labelled as an intentional and evil murderer.

The strategy employed by the state to incarcerate and eradicate a specific demographic is not limited to totalitarian regimes but is also evident in contemporary liberal democracies (Mbembe 2003). For this, the state depends heavily on policed spaces that shape political dynamics. The film effectively depicts the power play between the white (able-bodied) officers and the black (disabled) inmates, with the former perpetrating violence. Most of the inmates in the prison cells are from an economically backward black community who are striving to overcome social barriers. The goal of the legal practice is to represent helpless and exposed victims of the criminal justice system, such as the impoverished, the crippled, and the unfairly convicted. Ironically, these defenceless individuals who are black, disabled and poor become easy targets within a corrupt justice system.

Conclusion

In recent years, the portrayal of disability has evolved, featuring characters with greater agency and depth, along with their representation in diverse narratives. These characters are complex and multidimensional, some of whom are written and performed by disabled individuals (characters from CODA). Such portrayals aim to present the disabled experience with authenticity and respect, moving beyond the mere representation of impairment (Issac in Sex Education). However, despite these visible changes, the problems identified by Shakespeare remain relevant today. The authentic lived experiences of disabled individuals are frequently sidelined and are often employed to evoke narrative tension, highlight a moral flaw, or provoke an emotional response. Another pertinent problem is the need for film industries to create platforms that elevate black voices to present a broad spectrum of black experiences. Many films depict disability through the eyes of non-disabled writers and directors, featuring non-disabled actors without consulting or collaborating with the disabled community (Tarvainen 2019). The intersection of race and disability requires a distinct language and approach, different from the dominant mainstream white disability rights narrative. When depicted in literary works or films, black disabled characters often assume a degraded or subaltern position compared to the the non-disabled characters (K-Luv in Sucker-Free City) or are portrayed as inspirational porn (Ray Charles in Ray), indicating a clear crisis in their representation and the continued relevance of Shakespeare. While media portrayals have moved away from archaic representations, equitable and multifaceted representations are still needed to dismantle assumptions that underpin disability.

Although The Green Mile and Just Mercy primarily focus on racial injustice, the paper brings out a new dimension of necropolitics and state violence by engaging with the lived experiences of characters at the intersection of oppressions, specifically race and disability. Coffey and Richardson’s disabilities, along with their blackness, render them more vulnerable to social ostracism and violence within a system that is both racist and ableist. Though the two films are produced from different periods, they show that the inequality legalised in the country’s past governance has impacted the present system. The paper not only adds a new critical layer to the representation of race but also attempts to bring to light the politics of power, death, agency and visibility of the black disabled population.

Relying on Agamben’s insights on bios and zoē, as well as post-Foucauldian debates on biopolitics, Mbembe observes necropolitics as the political making of subjectivities and spaces located in an in-between of life and death (Mbembe 2003). The racist discourse surrounding black criminality (Bell and Harris 2016), along with ableism, works in tandem as prevailing ways to govern the ‘unwanted’ populations and marginalised groups, especially those who are burdened by multiple marginalisations. Within this biopolitical framework, the capacity to kill or exist in a death-like state highlights the state’s power over life. The political body depends on these valueless lives (zoē), who become a part of the political bodies only through their exclusion, termed ‘inclusive exclusion,’ to reinforce and define bios (Agamben 1998:7). Necropolitics and state violence entangle all people, regardless of class and race, yet the disproportionate imprisonment of black disabled individuals is owed to their vulnerability as disposable humans.

In The Green Mile, Coffey was unjustly imprisoned despite his apparent innocence, while in Just Mercy, police officials assembled multiple witnesses to falsely accuse Richardson in order to secure a conviction that could lead to his execution. Both Coffey and Richardson, as depicted in their respective narratives, are black and disabled, and the justice system disregarded their disabilities. Both films weaponize blackness as a threat through racial stereotypes, and their disabilities hinder their ability to defend themselves. They are seen as threats and are subjected to live in states of exception, with prison cells serving as zones of death. The justice system condemns them not based on evidence, but on racial bias and fear. This reflects how black men, especially those with disabilities, have historically been scapegoated in American legal history. Although the films are set in different periods, the justice system, along with judges and policymakers, operates within a societal milieu that is rife with ableist and racist attitudes. This justifies an array of laws, practices, and policies that dehumanise victims who are either black, disabled, or both. Therefore, it is crucial to confront and address these profound injustices as we work towards a more inclusive and equitable society that recognises, accepts and celebrates every person’s uniqueness as a valuable component of human diversity while also reinstating power and privilege to them.

According to Agamben, liberation cannot be attained through revolutionary practices but rather through subversive practices. Agamben argues that in the messianic concept, everything will remain more or less the same, except for a crucial difference: potentiality is no longer to be determined by the sovereign but by the individual (2007). This places active rights holders in a position of agency empowering them to make decisions and take action, while the passive rights holders have no control over their own lives and cannot effect any change (Agamben 2007). Even among the passive right holders, the white disabled or black abled men are in a better place when compared to black disabled men or women. Despite the visible presence of the black disabled community, there remains a need to create a space for their representation among the passive rights holders. Such spaces facilitate discussions around issues of death, policing, and incarceration as mechanisms of power within a necropolitical framework (Mbembe 2019). This prompts debates on the uneven distribution of deaths among specific demographics (Puar 2017). This inquiry also deepens our understanding of the multiple axes of identities that contribute to varying degrees of vulnerability while raising critical questions about why certain groups are at higher risk of mortality while others are protected. Furthermore, understanding the myriad layers of vulnerability makes necropolitical studies crucial for celebrating emerging frameworks like disability justice, tribal futurism, indigenous futurisms, afrofuturism etc, which envision possibilities of life beyond conditions of disposability. Therefore, a necropolitical analysis, grounded on an intersectional standpoint, facilitates an intervention that traces the operations of the death system while also addressing practices that defy and disrupt the necropolitical order.

This study contributes to contemporary scholarship on necropolitics by elucidating the state’s power structures as orchestrators of conditions that render the black disabled community as disposable zoē and subjects of social death when they are no longer deemed useful. The findings of the paper reaffirm Mbembe’s claim that modern power is defined by its ability to kill (Mbembe 2003), and the scapegoats are those at the intersections of marginalisation (Baynton 2001). This work adds a layer to this concept by understanding the experience of black disabled populations, their role as zoē and the normalisation of their deaths. Ultimately, this paper, through the selected films, foregrounds systems of domination by exposing the mechanisms of death in certain groups, while highlighting the need for collective care and the possibilities for life within these groups.