Fellows Series: Catherine Clune-Taylor

Since 2020, gun violence has emerged as the primary cause of death for those under the age of eighteen in the United States. Despite this, substantial gun control has yet to be achieved. In this presentation, I take up childhood gun death as an example of a biopolitical paradox, referring to the results of population level interventions that claim to aim at preventing harm and saving lives—usually of white women and children—yet which bring about the exact opposite in practice. I tie this paradox to Whiteness as a particular, hegemonically valued form of life that has become non-identical with being white, and to specific values that have come to be identified with it, and with which it identifies itself. These values include, among others, normative cisness and heterosexuality, proper (i.e., eugenic) reproduction, uninterrupted class mobility, and the right to protect oneself and one's property from racialized and queering threats via unrestricted gun ownership and use.

This presentation traces the conditions of existence for children and their communities amidst this necropolitical moment, by analyzing both consumer products and social media posts created specifically to help children and teachers survive school shootings. While the majority of child gun deaths do not happen in school shootings, I argue that the school shooting has nonetheless become symbolic of its looming threat, representing it in its most random and brutal form such that the school has become a site where the risk of death gathers most clearly, and intractably.