Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease

Join Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús for a powerful discussion of her new book, which unearths the disturbing history and ongoing impact of "excited delirium syndrome," a fabricated medical diagnosis used to absolve police of responsibility in the deaths of mostly Black and Latiné men. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and historical research, Beliso-De Jesús exposes how this invented condition-rooted in racial eugenics and pioneered by Miami medical examiner Charles Wetli-has been deployed to cloak state violence in the guise of physiological failure and drug use. Through a decolonial approach, dismantling the supposed neutrality of Western medical and legal systems that perpetuate racial hierarchies under the guise of expertise, Beliso-De Jesús blends ethnography and intimate journal entries, fusing intellectual examination with critical reflection. She writes not only of data but of spirits-those of the dead who continue to haunt, whose deaths demand justice. In braiding her own experiences with Afro-Latiné spiritual traditions into the narrative, she offers a form of resistance and healing, one that transcends the Eurocentrism of Western rationalism. Excited Delirium stands as a powerful testament to the ongoing struggle against the criminalization of Black and Brown people and the urgent need to confront the state's role in racialized violence.