Networked afterlives: Necropolitical algorithms and rumours as acts of resurrection

Abstract

This chapter examines how digital rumours and violent imagery shape the ongoing presence of the dead in Delhi after the 2020 pogrom. It introduces the concept of the networked afterlife to describe how bodies and images circulate through social media, messaging apps, and digital archives as affective and political presences. Drawing on sensory ethnography in pogrom-affected neighbourhoods alongside digital trace analysis, the chapter follows how rumours function as rituals of algorithmic resurrection, reanimating past violence and shaping anti-Muslim majoritarian imaginaries imaginaries. It argues that in digitally saturated environments, death exceeds the body and endures through circulation, where images and rumours sustain the dead as ongoing political and affective forces.