Corporeal Disregard for This Body That Holds Me: A Theoretical Framework for Examining Gender-Race Logics Underlying Police Violence Against Black Women and Femme

Abstract

This thesis responds to the paucity of critical theoretical frameworks for illuminating and examining the gender–race logics that underlie police violence against Black women and femme, particularly when the embodied police act itself is not inherently sexual(ized) in nature. This is both useful and necessary because 1) we capture a more comprehensive picture of the ways and reasons why Black women and femme are subjected to police brutality, and 2) we refute the internalized perception that women and femme of all genders are only visible or legible by way of their ability to be sexual or sexualized. In order to expand the scope of what we conceptualize as gendered police violence, I devise the framework of corporeal disregard, which refers to the ways in which police encounters neglect and deny fully realized humanity to the material bodies of Black women and femme, oftentimes resulting in lethal physical and psychological conditions. I delineate the theoretical framework through two modes: corporeal disregard as inaction, and corporeal disregard as action. Each chapter details the historical context, related literature, intricate contours, and application of the gender–race logics invoked by the framework. This conceptual development is then grounded in an in-depth analysis of how corporeal disregard materialized (as inaction and as action) and resulted in the deaths of two specific Black women and femme: Layleen Cubilette-Polanco, and Rekia Boyd, respectively. Relying on historical and sociological analysis, Black feminist theory, essayistic prose, and auto-ethnographic observations, I weave together an intimate and honest study of gender- based police violence. The thesis closes with preliminary thoughts on suggestions for other theoretical frameworks examining the gender–race logics of police violence against Black women and femme in the United States.