Reproductive Justice as Resistance: Contemporary Activism Against State Violence and Gendered Racial Capitalism

• In Event: 4204 - Theorizing Resistance

Abstract

This mixed-methods qualitative working paper explores why and under what conditions reproductive justice (Luna & Luker 2015; Ross & Solinger 2017; Ross et a 2017) and anti-state violence praxes converge or overlap to fight against thanatopolitical projects (Foucault 1990). In examining the moments in which reproductive justice activists conceive of their organizing as being coalitionally or simultaneously anti-state violence work, I will explore the re-avowals of that which has been disavowed by neoliberalism and other epochs of gendered racial capitalism (Ferguson 2004; Ferguson & Hong 2012; Hong 2015). Though there have been many studies of reproductive health, rights, and justice, as well as studies of myriad mechanisms of state violence and structured inequality, there have been few sociological projects empirically and theoretically connecting these two bodies of work – especially from a social movements and resistance lens. This study seeks to fill that gap. Early analysis suggests connection across social movements, issue areas, and structures of race, gender and class is not always deliberate or framed in intuitive ways.

Author

• Meghan Daniel, University of Illinois at Chicago