“Is Your Dad a Towelhead?"

Capitals of Shame and Necropolitics in Post-9/11 America

Abstract

Using the author’s personal experiences as a Brown woman living in the United States after September 11, this paper uses post-9/11 violence enacted against Brown citizens to consider the nuances of necropolitics. Specifically, this paper argues that too often everyday acts of violence, such as gaslighting, are central mechanisms of necropolitical control. Frequently, these normalized aggressions make relegating people to the status of the living dead possible. Finally, this paper argues that necropolitics emerges from intra-actions, often causing the ontoepistemological death for communities of color in general and, in this case, Brown people in a physically and psychologically violent post-9/11 United States.