"Fatal Denial argues that over the past 150 years, US health authorities' explanations of and interventions into Black infant mortality have been characterized by the ""biopolitics of racial innocence,"" a term describing the institutionalized mechanisms in health care and policy that have at once obscured, enabled, and perpetuated systemic infanticide by blaming Black mothers and communities themselves.
Following Black feminist scholarship demonstrating that the commodification and theft of Black women's reproductive bodies, labors, and care is foundational to US racial capitalism, Annie Menzel posits that the polity has made Black infants vulnerable to preventable death. Drawing on key Black political thought and praxis around infant mortality—from W.E.B. Du Bois and Mary Church Terrell to Black midwives and birth workers—this work also tracks continued refusals to acknowledge this routinized reproductive violence, illuminating both a rich history of care and the possibility of more transformative futures."
By:
Annie Menzel Imprint: University of California Press Country of Publication: United States Volume: 9 Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 726g ISBN:9780520297197 ISBN 10: 0520297199 Series:Reproductive Justice: A New Vision for the 21st Century Pages: 382 Publication Date:28 May 2024 Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format:Hardback Publisher's Status: Active
Annie Menzel is a political theorist and former midwife. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.