Another Step Closer ...

Actually there's a few more but the good news is that I'm done with my conclusion and I mailed it off to my chair today. I also sent in my "Intent to Graduate" forms for CGU which is nothing more than a post-graduate evaluation form. I also mailed off the first round of job applications and that was a mad dash that included a host of updates and revisions to my cv, job letter, and contacting my committee for updated letters of recommendations. I have another round at the end of October which includes some that I'm really hoping to get. *crosses fingers*

At any rate, my dissertation is done ... sort of. The research is done, but now I have to go back and refine my chapters and bring my argument out more. Here's the gist of my dissertation for those of you who are interested. It's a load of nonsense, but oh well. It's part of the profession ...

My dissertation is a both an application and a critique of Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality in relation to legal studies scholarship of hate violence. The dissertation enables a radical interpretation of the relationship between state power and the construction of hate violence as a domain and rationality of governance. My argument contends that past and current hate crimes legislation functions as one of the most productive and efficient mechanisms to institutionalize state power in the regulation, management, and governance of difference. In Chapter 1, I review the existing literature on the discursive and ideological construction of “hate.” I argue that it is not only an object of knowledge to be defined, but that it also enables and rationalizes different exercises of state power other than punishment. In chapters 2 and 3, I examine two federal laws passed in response to hate violence: the Hate Crime Statistics Act (1990), and the Violence Against Women Act (1994). The chapters analyze the governmentalization of “sexual orientation” and “women,” respectively, as specific rationalities of governance. I argue, in general, that the two laws had a double function. On the one hand, both standardized a set of “risks” of hate violence that are specifically associated with the two identities. On the other hand, under the guise of protection, these same “risks” also functioned as a gateway to police these identities.

Chapters 4 and 5 form the second part of my dissertation which examines recent efforts to criminalize hate speech. Chapter 4 uses poststructuralist critiques of discourse and language to reveal limitations in the scholarship of critical race theories and feminist legal studies. Central to their intellectual and political project is the experience of pain and injury caused by hate speech that forms the basis for, and appeal of, criminalization. However, poststructuralists contend that regulating speech will not repress its injurious effects, but will instead reproduce the pain and injury as a fact of law. In order to reconcile these concerns and advance their political project, I argue that critical race theories must abandon their liberal humanist appeals to the pain and injury caused by hate speech, and aggressively adopt a paradigm and discourse of war. Only then can hate speech, as the speech of “my enemy,” be regulated.

Finally, Chapter 5 analyzes the U.S. Supreme Court case Virginia v. Black (2003). I argue that the Court’s plurality decision to strike down Virginia’s anti-cross burning law was not a total loss, but a unique development of “true threat” doctrine to define classes of hate speech. The appeal of this case is that it not only reveals the theoretical and legal implications of criminalizing hate speech, but it also demonstrates how culture is a critical site for contextualizing the power and pain of hate speech. Finally, my conclusion assesses the usefulness of governmentality in hate violence studies, and the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary research.