This article offers a new perspective on the failed states agenda, and the reconfiguration of colonial discourse buttressing it, by theorising its afterlives. The concept of afterlives has mostly been discussed as a metaphor or in passing in the IR literature. Drawing from the post- and decolonial literature, we propose to define the concept simultaneously as aftermaths and echoes of the past, which can be apprehended through specific translations through which the past lives on. This conceptualisation of afterlives provides a tool to study the persistence of colonial forms beyond notions of continuity and rupture. We develop the concept of afterlives through a discussion of the failed states agenda and its various iterations. As such, we discuss four specific translations of the agenda: the genesis of the agenda in the decolonisation period; the consolidation of the agenda during the early 1990s, the crisis of the agenda and the rise of the resilience discussion, and finally the rise of the fragile city agenda. We focus particularly on the burgeoning discussion on fragile cities, and the rescaling of intervention, to underline the afterlives of the failed states agenda. To illustrate our argument, we discuss two specific manifestations through which we can effectively grasp the translation of the colonial discourse: the pathologisation of fragile states and cities, operated through various twin figures (civilised/barbaric; strong/dysfunctional; resilient/vulnerable) and their practical repercussions; and the visualisation and mapping of fragile states and cities, exemplifying the durability and contradictions of the failed states agenda.