Bodies in the middle : Black women, sexual violence, and complex imaginings of justice / Maya Hislop.

9781643364902 electronic book
1643364901 electronic book
9781643364889 hardcover
9781643364896 paperback

Columbia, South Carolina : University of South Carolina Press, [2024]

©2024

English

1 online resource (xii, 184 pages) : illustrations.

HV6556 .H56 2024

362.883082/0973

"A probing analysis of Black women's attempts to pursue justice for sexual violence victims within often hostile social and legal systems In Bodies in the Middle: Black Women, Sexual Violence, and Complex Imaginings of Justice, Maya Hislop examines the lack of place that Black women experience, specifically when they are victims of sexual violence. Hislop uses both historical and literary analysis to explore how women, in the face of indifference and often hostility, have sought to redefine justice for themselves. Hislop develops a framework she calls "Afro-pessimistic justice." Afro-pessimism begins from the belief that Black life in America, and in turn the American justice system, is constrained within a framework of anti-Blackness meant to enforce white supremacy. Beginning from this baseline, Hislop centers the experience of Black women while also acknowledging that formal legal justice is illusive, perhaps impossible, within systems built on anti-Black violence. Inspired by the work of Black studies luminaries like Orlando Patterson, Sylvia Wynter, and Fred Moten, Hislop asks what justice can look like in the absence of total victory and how Black women have attempted to define alternative paths to a more just future. Caught in the double bind because of their racial and gender identities, Black women are especially vulnerable within a web of social and legal systems that too often discount their humanity and diminish their legal standing"-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on July 17, 2024).

Cultures of resistance

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