Bereaved Black Mothers and Maternal Activism in the Racial State

"48 The intensive management of Black women, the reconfiguration of motherhood, and women's reduction to "bare life" are integral to the racial practices of the British state and to how gendered violence is enacted in processes that sustain the benefits of globalization for wealt...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Feminist studies 2018-01, Vol.44 (3), p.713-735
Main Author:	Lawson, Erica S.
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Activism African American literature African Americans American literature Bereavement Biopolitics Black people Black women Children Clinton, Bill Coates, Ta-Nehisi Conspiracy Detention Friendship Fulton, Sybrina Gender-based violence Globalization Grief Hegemony Law enforcement Literary devices Logic Martin, Trayvon Mothers Murders & murder attempts Music Pain Parents & parenting Political activism Political participation Politics Power Public administration Publishing Publishing industry Race relations Social justice State Subjectivity Women
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Summary:	"48 The intensive management of Black women, the reconfiguration of motherhood, and women's reduction to "bare life" are integral to the racial practices of the British state and to how gendered violence is enacted in processes that sustain the benefits of globalization for wealthy countries. [...]if their reproductive bodies are enmeshed within the technologies of carcerality and reduced to bare life, it stands to reason that imprisoned African women in Yarl's Wood detention center would use their bodies and the (potential, limited) power accorded to motherhood as a last resort to call attention to their plight, to challenge the necropolitics of the sovereign British state, and, importantly, to keep their children alive. According to the affidavit outlining the incident, Jordan Davis and three friends were playing loud music in their vehicle, and Davis was "threateningly" disrespectful to Dunn when asked to turn it down. [...]of the murder of her son, Lucia McBath became a spokesperson for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and an advocate for repealing Stand Your Ground laws, thus extending her private expression of maternal grief into political activism. [...]Black women live with the tensions between their desire for justice and the apparatuses of the racial state that encroach on their daily existence. [...]parents' affective relationship with their children in life and in death brings about a particular type of relational and political subjectivity that motivates them to act in the world to change the contradictory terms by which they are governed in the US racial state.
ISSN:	0046-3663 2153-3873 2153-3873