Shatema Threadcraft, "Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Nov 22, 2025

Shatema Threadcraft, an Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University and expert in Black feminist theory, dives deep into the haunting realities of Black femicide and the role of Black women in reshaping democracy. She discusses the alarming statistics surrounding Black women's premature deaths and critiques the prevailing narratives that overlook their struggles. Threadcraft highlights the significance of grassroots activism, storytelling, and data collection as tools for change, while showcasing innovative methods from women who redefine community protection and political engagement.

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INSIGHT

Black Femicide As Structural Political Problem

Black femicide names murders of Black women enabled by structural racism and intersecting oppressions.
Shatema Threadcraft centers activism, archival struggle, and novel democratic forms responding to these deaths.

INSIGHT

Active Versus Passive Femicide

Active femicide is intentional killing; passive femicide includes deaths by neglect like pregnancy-related mortality.
Threadcraft highlights Black maternal mortality as a key case of passive femicide driving racial disparities.

INSIGHT

Police Role In Black Women's Premature Death

Police often fail to protect Black women and can escalate harm, framing defense as criminality rather than aid.
Abolition feminists argue criminalization worsens Black women's exposure to violence and limits self-defense.

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Western democracies are haunted. Michael Hanchard suggests that the specter of race is what haunts our democracies, but it may be more accurate to suggest that they are haunted by their own racialized death machines—by racialized premature death. If this haunting is not adequately attended to, democracies cannot fulfill their function. Even W. E. B. Du Bois, whose lynching-as-crucifixion stories are important among the stories of Black peoplehood and represent an important attempt to reckon with death in democracy, did not attend to the haunting. But many innovative Black female democrats did. Black women face a crisis of premature death. They are 10 percent of the US female population yet represent 59 percent of women murdered. Their deaths are most often instances of intimate partner violence and occur in private, whereas most large-scale Black political mobilization centers on deaths that are “spectacular.” The centrality of spectacular death has functioned to marginalize Black women in the stories of Black peoplehood and has ensured that they are not the main beneficiaries of large-scale Black political mobilization. But the dearth of mobilization around the deaths of women has not stopped Black women from attending to that which haunts our democracy. Moreover, it is not simply Du Bois’s abolition democracy toward which the women have worked. Their work has involved experimentation with novel democratic forms, and we should think about that work—their methods and the substance of their contributions—within the framework of “Morrisonian truant democracy,” which provides the solution to the problem of mobilization. Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy (Oxford UP, 2025)

Professor Shatema Threadcraft is the Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Vanderbilt University.

Find host Sullivan Summer at her website, on Instagram, and at Substack, where she and Shatema continued their conversation.

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