States of dismemberment : state violence and the un/making of queer subjectivities

This dissertation uses a combination of methods, such as ethnography, life histories, archival research and film documentation to investigate how the diffusion and assemblage of sexuality, gender, and race, reproduce the variegated forms of violence perpetuated against queer brown people (in particular queer Mexican/Chican@ subjects) in Texas, to re-examine how they are embedded in how this violence is understood and articulated, as well as to understand how they sustain racial-sexual dominance through the simultaneous un/making of queer subjectivities. To do so, I look at the different sites where queer Mexican/Chican@ subjectivities are conscripted across time and space, from the courtroom to acts of public mourning, from the airport to the home, as they come-up against repressive mechanisms and structures that renders them vulnerable to the state and state practices. The central questions driving this research are: 1) what kinds of violations do dominant conceptualizations of racialized gender and sexuality produce? 2) What are the narratives that rationalize these violences and how do they come to obscure their effects and legitimize these practices? Along these same lines, how do these rational articulations manifest themselves in the queer body? 3) And finally, what kind of queer subjectivities are produced within the gendered racial encounters with the patriarchal state? The focus here on state practices and queer brown subjects is of critical importance as minimal attention has been given to how patriarchal constructions of racialized sexualities and gender come to enduringly underpin structures of dominance within the US and mobilized to legitimize the violence it continuously utilizes against queer Mexican/Chican@s.