Citation

Light CE. Signs 2021; 46(4): 911-937.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, University of Chicago Press)

DOI

10.1086/713302

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Rage-fueled appeals to women's armed empowerment drive a market in civilian-owned firearms and related commodities while fortifying deregulatory gun policy. Drawing from Achille Mbembe's (2003) concept of necropolitics, I unpack the intersecting racial and gender logics of women's armed response to patriarchal violence as a means by which the state "attribute[s] rational objectives to the very act of killing." In spite of its facial appeals to all women's empowerment, the "good woman with a gun" remains an exclusionary trope that neutralizes women's rage in the service of deregulatory governance and the efficient, cost-effective outsourcing of state violence. The emphasis on stranger danger masks the number-one threat to women's safety--their own male acquaintances and intimate partners--while effacing the disproportionate impact of structural violence on Black, Brown, and Indigenous women and girls.

Language: en