CoDE seminar: 'Sexual Violence in Racial Capitalism' - Alison Phipps
| Dates: | 23 April 2026 |
|---|
| Times: | 13:00 - 14:30 |
|---|
| What is it: | Seminar |
|---|
| Organiser: | Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) |
|---|
| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Current University students |
|---|
| Speaker: | Professor Anne Pollock staff page |
|---|
|
In this CoDE lunchtime seminar, Professor Alison Phipps (York St John University) shares her research.
SUMMARY
What are the relationships between sexual violence, sexual fear, social control, and surplus value? What is the role of sexual violence as racial capitalist systems corral, mould, use, and discard the workers they require? Sexual violence is key to the enclosure of bodies, and to the extraction of productive and socially reproductive labour. Sexual violence is a technique by which resources are expropriated, and communities and peoples terrorised and dispossessed. Sexual violence is also a pretext for the disposal of unwanted populations through criminal punishment, militarised border regimes, neo-colonial wars, and genocide.
This talk is based on the forthcoming book Sexual Violence in Racial Capitalism (Manchester University Press), which brings together assorted case studies including the Early Modern witch hunts, reproductive accumulation in transatlantic slavery, sexual harassment in drop-shipping warehouses and sweatshops, far-right Islamophobia and ‘anti-gender’ activism, the manosphere, and the Gaza genocide. It describes the coloniality of sexual violence, situating both acts of sexual violence and ideas of sexual threat within an analysis of racial capitalist property relations and the split colonial/modern psyche. It also argues that violence is necessary because power is incomplete: from bodily to planetary scales, resistance persists.
This seminar will be recorded.
HOW TO JOIN US
You can attend this seminar in person at the University of Manchester or online via Teams Webinar. Please register for the joining link and to be notified of any changes/cancellations.
FINDING US AND ACCESSIBILITY
See links on this page to the University of Manchester Maps page (for information on getting to the university and finding the building) and AccessAble (for accessibility information). For any other accessibility questions please contact us.
Speaker
Professor Anne Pollock staff page
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
Room 5.209
University Place
Manchester
