Winner of the 2013 John Hope Franklin Book Prize presented by the
American Studies Association
A necessary read that demonstrates the ways in which certain people
are devalued without attention to social contexts
Social Death tackles one of the core paradoxes of social justice
struggles and scholarship--that the battle to end oppression shares the
moral grammar that structures exploitation and sanctions state violence.
Lisa Marie Cacho forcefully argues that the demands for personhood for
those who, in the eyes of society, have little value, depend on
capitalist and heteropatriarchal measures of worth.
With poignant case studies, Cacho illustrates that our very
understanding of personhood is premised upon the unchallenged
devaluation of criminalized populations of color. Hence, the reliance of
rights-based politics on notions of who is and is not a deserving member
of society inadvertently replicates the logic that creates and
normalizes states of social and literal death. Her understanding of
inalienable rights and personhood provides us the much-needed
comparative analytical and ethical tools to understand the racialized
and nationalized tensions between racial groups. Driven by a radical,
relentless critique, Social Death challenges us to imagine a heretofore
"unthinkable" politics and ethics that do not rest on neoliberal
arguments about worth, but rather emerge from the insurgent experiences
of those negated persons who do not live by the norms that determine the
productive, patriotic, law abiding, and family-oriented subject.
