Necropolitics and Resistance in an Age of Surveillance and Exclusion

As I stroll through my Brussels neighbourhood, I frequently encounter an unassuming bronze plaque embedded in the pavement outside a narrow brick apartment. This plaque commemorates Louis Rickal, a former resident who joined the resistance during the Second World War. Rickal was arrested by the Nazis in 1943, sent to the Breendonk concentration camp, and ultimately executed a year later at the National Shooting Range in Schaerbeek, a location not far from where I reside. His involvement in the resistance was a courageous act against the horrors of fascism, seeking to protect his community at a time when the Gestapo targeted Jewish residents, minority groups, and ideological opponents, deporting many to camps such as Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Breendonk…