Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation
May 2022 · Verso Books
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About this ebook
THE POLITICS OF ABOLITION: The first-ever collection of writings from one of the foremost contemporary critical thinkers on racism, geography, police brutality, and mass incarceration.
“. . . . filled with sharp intelligence and even wit . . . Gilmore forces us to think of race, class, prisons, and the world in entirely new ways.” —NPR
Gathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s work from over three decades, Abolition Geography presents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer, offering scholars and activists ways of seeing and doing to help navigate our turbulent present.
Abolition Geography moves us away from explanations of mass incarceration and racist violence focused on uninterrupted histories of prejudice or the dull compulsion of neoliberal economics. Instead, Gilmore offers a geographical grasp of how contemporary racial capitalism operates through an “anti-state state” that answers crises with the organized abandonment of people and environments deemed surplus to requirement. Gilmore escapes one-dimensional conceptions of what liberation demands, who demands liberation, or what indeed is to be abolished. Drawing on the lessons of grassroots organizing and internationalist imaginaries, Abolition Geography undoes the identification of abolition with mere decarceration, and reminds us that freedom is not a mere principle but a place.
“Scholars like Ruthie Gilmore, filmmakers like Ava Duvernay . . . have all done work to expose the many injustices of the industry of our prison system.” —Jay-Z, Time
“. . . . filled with sharp intelligence and even wit . . . Gilmore forces us to think of race, class, prisons, and the world in entirely new ways.” —NPR
Gathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s work from over three decades, Abolition Geography presents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer, offering scholars and activists ways of seeing and doing to help navigate our turbulent present.
Abolition Geography moves us away from explanations of mass incarceration and racist violence focused on uninterrupted histories of prejudice or the dull compulsion of neoliberal economics. Instead, Gilmore offers a geographical grasp of how contemporary racial capitalism operates through an “anti-state state” that answers crises with the organized abandonment of people and environments deemed surplus to requirement. Gilmore escapes one-dimensional conceptions of what liberation demands, who demands liberation, or what indeed is to be abolished. Drawing on the lessons of grassroots organizing and internationalist imaginaries, Abolition Geography undoes the identification of abolition with mere decarceration, and reminds us that freedom is not a mere principle but a place.
“Scholars like Ruthie Gilmore, filmmakers like Ava Duvernay . . . have all done work to expose the many injustices of the industry of our prison system.” —Jay-Z, Time
THE POLITICS OF ABOLITION: The first-ever collection of writings from one of the foremost contemporary critical thinkers on racism, geography, police brutality, and mass incarceration.
“. . . . filled with sharp intelligence and even wit . . . Gilmore forces us to think of race, class, prisons, ...
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About the author
Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences, and American Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she is also Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. She is the author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Honors include the American Studies Association Angela Y. Davis Award for Public Scholarship (2012); the Association of American Geographers' Harold Rose Award for Anti-Racist Research and Practice (2014); the SUNY-Purchase College Eugene V. Grant Distinguished Scholar Prize for Social and Environmental Justice (2015-16); and the American Studies Association Richard A Yarborough Mentorship Award (2017).
Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences, and American Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she is also Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. She is the author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Oppositio...
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