This talk explores death, undeath, and afterlife across the Imperium of Man, the galaxy’s civilizations, and the Warp. The Imperium’s citizens lack political enfranchisement; power is predicated on death and sacrifice, which serve as the civilization’s organizing principles. Undeath is a recurring theme in Warhammer, and special attention will be paid to the Necrons, the Emperor, and the Dreadnought, alongside the various fates awaiting the dead.
We draw on Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics to examine death as foundational to the Imperium’s legitimacy. Building from Foucault’s theory of biopower, Mbembe argues that political authority manifests in the administration of mortality rather than life alone. The Imperium treats human life as expendable, yet lives are the Emperor’s currency, and, hence, death is made meaningful. The dead are repurposed as martyrs, saints, relics, servitors, propaganda, or warnings, gaining their ultimate significance only through death.
We compare this with other empires in the setting and their views on death, drawing on Robert Hertz’s theory of funeral ritual to examine how ritual reintegrates the dead into the moral and political order of their society. The idea that ritual can transform catastrophic loss into social cohesion, and that this transformation is what allows empires to sustain perpetual war, resonates throughout the setting. The Aeldari are a particularly useful point of comparison here.
Taken together, the exaggerated social and political structures of the 40k setting provide a speculative environment in which theories, specifically of necropolitics, sovereignty, and ritual death, can be examined with unusual clarity.
Author bios
Alexander Krieg is a coroner and death investigator. He has a strong interest in the humanities and enjoys Warhammer fiction as a way of exploring concepts in these fields.
Sarah Keenan is currently completing post-baccalaureate work in pre-health at the University of Colorado Boulder. She previously completed a BA in English at the University of Florida with a focus in film studies and art history.
