Signifying Ruptures: Violence and Language at the Intersections of Identity

Abstract

My dissertation investigates violence as a signifying system that produces meaning like a language. People remake the meaning of violence by way of normalizing hierarchies that permit some violences (but not others) to be perceived as acceptable. Specifically, the project engages with American legacies of historically legitimized violence, for example chattel slavery and frontier/settler colonial violence, and it shows how these legacies instill normalized violence into general culture.