The Indebted Body as an Economic Aggression: The Religious Violence of Economic Debt in Current Racial Capitalism.

Who fatally shot Alexa Negrón Luciano, and under what pretext can someone’s life be endangered for merely using a restroom that society deems inappropriate for them?[i] What kind of authority renders an individual dehumanized for occupying the “incorrect” space? I contend that the shooter, though physically responsible, was merely a conduit for a more systemic force: debt, a power mechanism that penetrates, through the relationship between creditor-debtor, a whole aspect of society, establishing and shaping specific forms of production and control of collective and individual subjectivity. Thus, debt morphed Alexa’s gender and body into a debtor of the heterosexual matrix.[ii]

In this paper, I delve into the profound and violent impact of economic debt within the framework of racial capitalism, centring on the heart-wrenching narrative of Alexa Negrón Luciano —a transgender homeless woman brutally murdered in Puerto Rico. This case acts as a lens through which I examine the confluence of identity, religion, marginalization, and economic brutality. I argue that economic debt serves as a potent mechanism of discrimination and discipline, likening its impact on individuals —especially those from marginalized groups— to an act of economic violence akin to rape.

Drawing on theoretical and methodological insights from Michel Foucault and Paul B. Preciado, among others, I contend that debt exceeds its strict economic function, standing as a fundamental technology of body production within the Foucauldian framework, often intertwined with religious language.[iii] Thus, I propose that debt is a technology of the power/knowledge discourse as ancient as the heteronormative and patriarchal matrix, integral to the colonial enterprise and perpetuation of coloniality that indebted, categorized, sexualized, racialized, and normalized the bodies of the colonized.[iv]

This proposal unfolds in two primary sections. Initially, I explore how economic debt morphs individuals into “indebted subjects”—entities whose existence and identity are sculpted by the creditor-debtor dynamic, obscuring the distinction between economic duty and personal identity.[v] Here, I offer some insights into debt’s historical role in cementing colonial and racialized power hierarchies. Subsequently, I scrutinize contemporary racial capitalism, especially its pharmacopornographic regime as delineated by Preciado, to illuminate how economic debt serves as a mechanism of control and discipline that commodifies desires and transforms individuals into “debtbodies.” [vi] These entities are subjugated to an economic system that exploits their identities and labour for profit, masquerading as freedom and salvation.

By unravelling the interconnectedness of the subjective and economic dimensions of debt, I aspire to highlight the religious language and violent dimensions of economic debt, challenging traditional perceptions of debt and urging a critical re-assessment of its societal and adopted religious expression.[vii] This endeavour seeks to enrich discussions on economic theology, ethics, and the interplay between economy, race, and identity, prompting a re-evaluation of the structures that perpetuate economic and bodily domination.

[i] “On Sunday, the mockery turned deadly. Someone posted photos of Ms. Negrón being questioned by the police for supposedly peeping at another customer in a women’s bathroom at a fast-food restaurant, and the post went viral. Not 12 hours later, she was framed in the headlights of a car and shot to death amid a cackle of laughter — her final moments apparently also posted on social media.” By Frances Robles, The New York Times, Feb. 26, 2020.

[ii] Teresa de Lauretis, “Gender Identities and Bad Habits,” in Actas del IV Congreso Estatal Insomnía sobre Identidad de Género vs. Identidad Sexual (Castell. de la Plana, España: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I, 2008): 13–23. and Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987).

[iii] Beatriz Preciado, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (New York: The Feminist Press, 2013), 72; Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 89.

[iv] Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 22. Aníbal Quijano, “Colonialidad del poder, Eurocentrismo y América Latina,” in Aníbal Quijano, Cuestiones y horizontes: de la dependencia histórico-estructural a la colonialidad/descolonialidad del poder. (Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO, 2000), 777-828, and Nelson Maldonado Torres, “On the Coloniality of Being” in Cultural Studies 21, no.  2–3, (2007), 242, 247.

[v] Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015).

[vi] Paul B. Preciado, An Apartment on Uranus (Kindle Edition: Foreign Agents), 52.

[vii] Marcella, Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology. New York: Routledge, 2000, Marcella, Althaus-Reid,  The Queer God. New York: Routledge, 2003; Marcella, Althaus-Reid, Lisa Isherwood. Thinking Theology and Queer Theory in Feminist Theology, Vol. 15 (3): 302-314.