Genocidal Intimacies: Settler Colonial Belonging, U.S. Militarization, and the Consumption of Black and Indigenous Dead

• In Event: Entanglements of Empire: Blackness, Indigeneity, and the (Un)making of Carceral-Colonial Space

Abstract

Beginning in the 19th century, research institutions across the United States, in collaboration with the U.S. Army, conducted a mass excavation of Indigenous corpses for scientific study. In New Orleans, bones of the African-American dead are stolen, sold on underground markets, and/or used for witchcraft. Considering the settler logics of containment that seek to render the bodies of Black and Indigenous dead into material resources, I examine the sexualized fantasies enacted through the extraction and consumption of these corpses. I argue that settler belonging is accessed through genocidal intimacies, which are reproductive of militarized, carceral settler space.

Presenter

• Claire Urbanski, University of California, Santa Cruz