The case of Sparkle Rai: A violent patriarchal narrative of conspiratorial kinship and race

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores how the absence of a robust anthropological analysis of intersecting kinship obligations obscured a more complete public understanding of a horrific crime and the patriarchal (ir)rationality it underlined. The following court trial that I witnessed in its entirety on the CourtTV channel in the United States, necessitated an anthropological analysis that neither legal nor media analysts could perform, at the peril of failing to understand the contextual drivers of such criminal (ir)rationality. I argue that patriarchal affinities can often work beyond cultural, religious, or racial differences in reproducing gender and anti‐Blackness through unlikely partnerships predicated upon a shared disregard for women's lives. I proceed, therefore, from a standpoint that views violence against women as rooted in what I call conspiratorial kinship not in culture, religion, race, or ethnicity (Abu‐Lughod 2011, 17). The case in question will demonstrate how these social domains serve as validating proxies legitimating violence against offending women in the problematic name of honor.