This essay is framed by discussions on the civil unrest in British cities in 2011, the politics of austerity, the mass unemployment of the young, ‘the war on terror’ and ‘radicalization’ and the vulnerability of the poor and ‘unrespectable’. It advances a concept of biocoloniality and explores ‘respectability’, class and transnational post colonial urban cultures in contemporary London. The essay argues for a theorization which can account for how a divided subject produces the effect of an undivided and self-governing ‘core self’ who ‘possesses’ distinguishing ‘biological’ ‘capacities’, ‘psychological attributes’ and cultural ‘characteristics’. It considers how this is accomplished through our daily practical activity such as our ‘imaginable’, ‘possible’ sexual desires, everyday practices of reflection, our bodily demeanour and bodily significations. This concept of biocoloniality is composed of two theoretical strands. In ‘on inscription and creolization’ and in dialogue with a single respondent on ‘res...