Abstract

Who does the state recognize as a lawful subject? The universal body of liberal legalism has historically been imagined as a specific kind of body: white, male, heterosexual, and propertied. Can we understand the recent appearance of state violence against black bodies on the public stage in terms of recognition? Sociopolitical recognition is tethered to a history of selective and differential visibility, which has positioned certain bodies as objects of recognition and granted others the power to confer recognition. Struggles for recognition are also struggles for visibility. As suggested by this photograph of a black male kneeling with his hands in the air in the middle of the street in..