(Political) Anesthesia or (Political) Memory: The Combahee River Collective and the Death of Black Women in Custody

Why do investigations of murders of Black Women during police stops and in custody so often result in being deemed a "good kill" and "within policy?" The essay explores violence against Black Women through theorizing the political order as a "slave polity" whose long reliance on "biomedical racialization" and the medical plantation have shaped the historical relationship between the society and Black Women. Reading two artistic works, the theater and digital humanities project, The Anarcha Project (2007/8) and Austin Clarke's novel The Polished Hoe (2002), the essay offers a critical theory analysis of Combahee River Collective's (1970s–1980s) philosophy of liberation.