Death Beyond Disavowal

Abstract

This book utilizes “difference” as theorized by women of color feminists to analyse works of cultural production by people of color as expressing a powerful antidote to the erasures of contemporary neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is first and foremost a structure of disavowal enacted as a reaction to the successes of the movements for decolonization, desegregation, and liberation of the post-World War II era. It does so in order to posit that racial, gendered, and sexualized violence and inequity are conditions of the past, rather than the very foundations of contemporary neoliberalism’s exacerbation of premature death. Neoliberal ideologies hold out the promise of protection from premature death in exchange for complicity with this pretense. The writings and archival materials of the late Barbara Christian, Death Beyond Disavowal and other author’s works find the memories of death and precarity that neoliberal ideologies attempt to erase. This books treatment of neoliberalism expands upon the typical definitions of neoliberalism in order to describe it as first and foremost a structure of erasure, to center race, gender, and sexuality, and to posit cultural production as an effective rejoinder to neoliberalism’s violence against people of color. Furthermore, this book situates women of color feminism, often dismissed as narrow or limited in its effect, as a powerful diagnosis of and alternative to, such violence. Thus, it situates culture and ideology as political economic forces, and argues for the importance of women of color feminism to any critical engagement with contemporary neoliberalism.

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