Oct 28, 2017 | 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM | Studio Theatre

Navneet Kumar, PhD

Disposable Black Body: Prejudice and Dehumanization

Disposable Black Body: Prejudice and Dehumanization

Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow (2010) argues that the criminal justice system in the US discriminates against the black body and the history of slavery and its legacy have morphed that body into something criminal today. She argues that decades of cognitive bias research demonstrates that both conscious and unconscious biases lead to discriminatory actions and the black body has been at the receiving end of this prejudice for centuries now. Thus Alexander argues that the mass incarceration of the black body may be termed as the new Jim Crow since the body is essentially discriminated against, vilified, and ultimately seen as readily disposable. In a similar vein, Bryan Stevenson in Just Mercy (2014) makes the argument that that there is a clear line between the 18th century extrajudicial practice of lynching and the death penalty of the modern times. The black body bears the brunt of being considered disposable yet again and this time instead of being shot in the streets of Chicago or Baltimore, Stevenson informs the reader how the legal system is complicit in perpetuating society’s prejudices and biases and commits the black body to the death penalty without much compunction. Employing Judith Butler’s notion of mourning from Precarious Lives (2005), I argue that the dehumanization of the black body serves to legitimatize the differential allocation of grievability even when Eric Garner’s voice reverberated with “I can’t breathe.” I argue that the black body has been left outside the parameters of a livable life and a grievable death as some lives are worth mourning and grieving while others are not. I argue that dehumanization of the black body serves to reinforce the differential allocation of human value to certain bodies making those lives and deaths more precarious than the others.

Mary Morrissey, MA

Incriminating Women of Circumstance: The Gendered and Material Implications of the War on Drugs

As the War on Drugs has removed a large population of black men from urban communities, scholars have argued that the War on Drugs is in fact a “war on (black) women” (Bush-Baskette, 1998; Bush-Baskette, 1999; Goldfarb, 2002).  This project examines the gendered and material implications of the War on Drugs. It interrogates the carceral and non-carceral experiences of women, particularly those involved in intimate or familial relationships with drug traffickers who are men. Using intersectional materialism and legal scholarship as lenses, I argue that women’s experiences in criminalized drug cases are inextricably linked to hegemonic gender roles and the gendered division of labor.  An examination of non-carceral and carceral policies and case studies demonstrates how women’s outcomes relate to reproductive labor, gendered expectations in their personal relationships, and their positions on the peripheries of the drug market.

Carol Jacobsen

Infiltrating the Gendered Criminal System for Justice and Human Rights

Carol Jacobsen Professor of Art, Women's Studies and Human Rights, The University of Michigan Director, Michigan Women's Justice & Clemency Project, The University of Michigan jacobsen@umich.edu http://www.umich.edu/~clemency/

Infiltrating the Gendered Criminal System for Justice and Human Rights

The history of women's criminalization is a history of state violence and injustice. From minor property and drug offenses to murder, women's crimes are produced by their struggle to survive and processed within a regime that imparts harsh, gendered modes of punishment. Drawing on long-term relationships, activism, filmmaking and public education with women on both sides of the prison fence through my roles as artist, educator, political organizer and Director of the Women's Justice & Clemency Project in Michigan, a grassroots nonprofit working to free women wrongfully sentenced to life and to monitor human rights abuses in the women's prison, this presentation offers a view of the ways incarcerated women find strategies of resistance and hope for freedom and greater social justice. Through their own efforts and through partnerships with feminist artists, scholars, attorneys, and activists women prisoners have challenged a prison system named by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as among the worst in the nation for human rights violations against women in custody including rapes, four point chaining, solitary confinement, medical abuse and other atrocities. This presentation will include short clips from several of my films narrated by women prisoners, nine of whom have been freed from life sentences through the efforts of the Michigan Women's Justice & Clemency Project.