RACIAL VIOLENCE AND THE POLITICS OF NATIONAL BELONGING: THE WISCONSIN SHOOTINGS, ISLAMOPHOBIA AND THE WAR ON TERRORIZED BODIES

Abstract

This paper argues that the Oak Creek Gurdwara shootings in Wisconsin, USA, cannot be understood outside the context of the history of racial violence in the US, nor that of the contemporary remaking of religio-racial politics in the global War on Terror. Critiquing liberalist framings of such violence as grounded in the personal biographies and inter-personal bigotry of individual perpetrators, I draw attention to the criticality of such violence in instantiating religio-racial difference. The paper ends with a discussion of how such violence remains deeply institutionalized within the structures of the nation-state and sustains the reproduction of white supremacy.