Seeing from Da Yaad: Black Women and the Politics of Respect

Why would law-abiding citizens protest the arrest of a don (i.e., a leader of a criminal organization) and confront the Jamaican constabulary police force, especially when such actions carry personal risk to the protestors’ safety? Why would the majority of protestors be women? These were the two questions that became the core puzzle for my dissertation, following the protests in Kingston, Jamaica that erupted in response to the state’s attempt to arrest and detain a don in May 2010. Current political science approaches might view the protests as irrational behaviour considering that such actions carry great personal risk and little potential benefit for the protestors. My study reveals that residents who engage in high-risk collective action in support of a don often do so because they see the don as a legitimate political authority. An important reason why they hold this view is because the dons treat them with respect. The experience of respect is an important, albeit understudied, mechanism that plays a central role in the political behaviour and strategies of actors beyond conventional cost-benefit calculations. Respect is communicated to residents and made visible in key interactions with the don, via a mechanism that I call displays of respect. Displays of respect are exhibited through governance practices that the don establishes in the community, governance practices that are highly gendered and, in certain cases and in certain ways, designed to protect women. Respect is one sort of political subjectivity, an internalised perception of and relation to authority, but the meaning of respect depends on context. To understand any political subjectivities, we have to understand how those subjectivities are embodied, i.e., how socio-political and personal histories, experiences of racialization, gendering, and personal experiences become internalised, how they affect perceptions and emotions, and how they shape the ways in which people relate to various sorts of authorities. This framework allows us to consider the political subjectivities of Black women in Jamaican garrison communities and how the feeling of being respected as a political subject informs their political motivations, perceptions, strategies, decisions, and ways of being in the present.Ph.D