Dashal Moore Social Science
Richmond's "State of Emergency"
Dashal’s project will use a recent debate in the Richmond City Council over the proposal to declare a State of Emergency as a focus for questions dealing with violence and politics in the deindustrialized and racialized American landscape. She will investigate how violence and crisis are constructed in various discourses, and how those understandings are deployed in governance. Although the State of Emergency was purportedly proposed in response to a spike in homicide rates, Dashal believes it actually stemmed from a more hidden and deep crisis. In the context of the neoliberal retrenchment of state services and the general financial crisis in deindustrialized municipalities, racialized minorities are increasingly portrayed as dangerous to society, thus providing a rationale for their differential treatment by the law. Using interdisciplinary methods and multimedia, Dashal’s research will reexamine the notion of violence within this more expansive framework.
