Racialized gendered violence : ‘domestic’ violence, black women and genocide in Brazil

textAlthough some analyses of genocide in Brazil consider the intersectionality of race, gender and class, few address the ways in which heteropatriarchy and sexism also impact women’s experiences with anti-black violence and terror. In order to better understand anti-black genocide in Brazil, we must take into account black women's multiple gendered and sexualized experiences with this violence. As a result, this thesis explores black women’s experiences with domestic violence as a form of anti-Black genocide. This contention, through an analysis of my fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador in the summer of 2013 as well as my engagement with Black Brazilian feminist theory, argues that domestic violence against Black women occurs at both a macro and micro level. Essentially, State violence against Black women is domestic violence writ large. Micro-sites of domestic violence against black women, typified by inter-personal violence, are not isolated manifestations. Instead, they are extensions of macro-state processes of domestic violence. In other words, we must read inter-personal violence against black women as part of the continuum of the state’s racialized, gendered, sexualized violence against the broader black community.Latin American Studie