Weheliye works through Black feminist theory, critical race theory, and biopolitics to argue that the category of the human—who counts, who is protected, who is disposable is only distinguishable to society through race, law, and power.

He reads thinkers like Foucault and Agamben against and alongside Black intellectual traditions, showing where their frameworks break down—specifically, where they fail to account for the ongoing conditions of racialised life. The concept of habeas viscus (roughly, “you shall have the flesh”) shifts the focus from abstract rights to embodied existence: how flesh is marked, controlled, and made to matter differently depending on the system it moves through.

This is not light theory. It’s dense, deliberate, and cumulative, but it earns it. What you get is a reworking of how personhood is defined—not as a given, but as something produced, withheld, and negotiated at the level of the body.

Paperback edition. Moderate shelf wear to covers with some creasing and edge wear. Internally clean, no markings. Structurally sound—good reading copy of a text that tends to stay in circulation.