Friday 30 October 2015
Razack’s spatialized justice and Cece McDonald
This week I will engage with Sherene Razack’s article, “Gendered racial violence and spatialized justice: The murder of Pamela George”. The article not only forced us to be more critical of space and the current implications of certain bodies in certain spaces but discussed the historical context through which these spaces were “made”. Razack also makes the vital argument that to discount all the factors of race, gender and colonialism in the murder of Pamela George would be unwise and actually miss the point entirely. George's intersectional identities as a woman, a sex worker, an indigenous body and one that had repeatedly been subject to colonial violence layered on top of one another to shape the way that her case was received by the court.
All of these arguments made me think of the fairly well known story of Cece McDonald (Here is a brief outline of her story, although I should warn you that the narrative itself is definitely problematic http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-transgender-crucible-20140730). McDonald is an African-American trans-woman in her twenties. One night, she and her friends, all of whom were also African-American and some non-binary, went out to buy groceries. On their way, a "handful of cigarette-smoking white people” began to yell derogatory racial, gay and trans slurs at Cece and her friends. The situation escalated and in self -defense, Cece stabbed one of the men, Flaherty, "in the chest, burying the blade almost three and a half inches deep, slicing his heart”. Cece was charged with second degree murder and sent to jail for 19 months.
I think that this is an interesting example of a role reversal to the Pamela George case. What stands out the most to me are the ways in which it seems to prove that vulnerable bodies are meant to die, not meant to fight back. Both George and McDonald were targeted by white males as vulnerable/easy victims due to their race, class, gender and sexuality.
One of the major differences in the cases is that Cece lived and Pamela did not. But Cece’s fight back was criminalized. McDonald was punished by the legal system for being a survivor. In the case of bodies that are racialized, gendered and seen as “expendable” by society, there is no real alternative to violence. In the eyes of the court, vulnerable bodies should accept victimization. Any resistance to fulfilling this role in the script is unacceptable. Looking at these two cases, we can look at the justice system as another space in which certain vulnerable bodies are subjected to another kind of violence.
I thought that another interesting difference between the George and McDonald cases was the physical spaces that the crimes occurred in. Razack states that George’s perpetrators identified George’s body as one that was subjected violence because of her profession and the pervasive violence that occurred in the spaces that she worked. The hate crime against McDonald occurred, according to the article, in the "tree-lined streets of her quiet working-class Longfellow neighborhood in Minneapolis”. I think that this should prompt us to think about what happens to certain spaces when certain bodies with certain mindsets of entitlement enter them. As discussed in class today, Razack touches on how certain white male bodies who feel like they can do whatever they want, wherever and whenever they wan, transform spaces that they're in symbolically, resulting in very physical results.
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I really liked the way you phrased victimization of vulnerable bodies, in that they should just accept this. I think you bring up a really important point, in that our society is structured so that we understand who are the most marginalized, and most prone to violence within our society, yet our system almost encourages this victimization to occur because we are not doing things to actively engage with these issues. Moving into the discussion of spaces, I think the way that this active victimization occurs exists so that these spaces are not only reinforced about who may exist within them, but widen to exclude more people every time an act of violence occurs. Like you say above, people who commit these acts of violence are transforming the spaces they take up to become more and more exclusive. We heard this from the Kindred house presentation, and hear it whenever the news reports another Missing or Murdered Indigenous woman, realizing just how few spaces they are allowed to exist in within our society.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to think about how entitlement works to create violence when privileged bodies enter spaces understood to be degenerate, as well as when racialized bodies enter spaces which are apparently respectable. In either case, the dominant subjects exercise control at the expense of marginalized subjects. For women like George and McDonald, there are very few places in which they belong and are safe, and which are not subject to infiltration.
ReplyDeleteI also think it is interesting the ways that different factors of marginalization are presented. The description of the neighborhood where McDonald and her friends were assaulted is clearly wrought in these same narratives of respectable/degenerate space, and who belongs to each of these. This reinforces the ties between spaciality and privilege and the ways these are wrapped up in systems of responsibilization and marginalization.
Continuing on this note about perpetrators of violence "transforming" spaces, I think it's interesting that you noted the similarities of the Pamela George and CeCe McDonald cases while highlighting an important difference: the physical space in which these vulnerable, marginalised bodies were violated. Unlike George, who was taken outside the city to a backcountry road (a traditionally "degenerate" space), McDonald was assaulted in the "respectable" streets of a tree-lined, middle-class neighbourhood. In both cases, these victim's attackers were privileged, white, male bodies. And they were privileged,
ReplyDelete-and entitled- above all else, because of the way their bodies are presented, represented and understood. If this week's readings were about the way subjectivities are created by and within the spaces they exist in, then the way these spaces are transgressed and by WHO become an undeniably pressing part of the conversation. Which bodies are "entitled" to this spatial movement? And in the cases of George and McDonald, in what ways were these bodies perhaps attempting this spatial movement, only to be met with hideous acts of violence? Drawing comparisons between these two cases highlights the ways vulnerable, marginalised bodies (sex workers, trans people, people of color) are VIOLENTLY "put" in their place by dominant, hegemonic (often white) bodies. The latter have the privilege of moving between respectable and degenerate spaces, and the power to assert their position within this spectrum of space. They determine who is and who isn't allowed to enter and exist in these spaces through the use of violence. Murder and assault are only notable, acknowledged (and sometimes punishable) forms of violence that exist everywhere in everyday life in dialogue, discourse, policy, societal norms and attitudes. If we are to address this violence as operating on a systematic level, I am learning that it must be understood as a pervasive and constant policing of vulnerable bodies. George and McDonald, among countless others, can be seen as both products and pawns of a system that simultaneously ascribes VALUE to bodies to solidify and perpetuate a hierarchy of body management. I think we need to see George and McDonald as victims and survivors of this hierarchy to look at the ways violence becomes a deeply engrained (and often accepted) RESPONSE to body and space management.