Policing, Public Consumption, and the Black Body as Fetish Object

Kaaryn Gustafson and James Lamb

Professor and Associate Dean, UCI Law; Director, Center for Law, Equality, and Race; JD 2020, UCI Law
Saturday, March 7, 12:00-7:00pm

Centering Anthony Paul Farley’s The Black Body as Fetish Object, 76 Or. L. Rev. 457 (1997), Gustafson and Lamb examined Supreme Court jurisprudence and modern policing as producers of racial difference, as well as sources of racial pleasure. This talk focused on the absence of images of black bodies in American Monument and its resistance to the everyday production of racial difference, the pleasures of racial subordination, and the naturalization of violence upon Black bodies. The talk analyzed both the pleasures of degrading Black bodies and the role of state institutions in that degradation.