Published 20 December 2021 by

Joy James (2019) - The Architects of Abolitionism

Quotes and notes from this video:

  • Just to note, a lot of this work is done with and around Kathleen Cleaver.
  • There's an eclipsing of political prisoners and an almost near exclusion of it in the discourse around prison abolition.
  • This comes largely as a result or in relationship with the forces of deradicalisation. (People looking at abolition and gaining a career on the back it, people looking at it and trying to decrease abolition to things like 'defund'...)
  • Criminalisation of political action through non-political means (e.g., drug laws).
  • In the assimilation of these ideas, there's a split between vulnerability and capitalism.
  • Goals of Civil Rights Movement = goals of assimilation
    • This pairs well with other civil rights movements and their goals. This was a huge element of the "marriage equality" acts, which defanged a lot of radical queer movements (including those that sought to de-privilege marriage and actually build sustainable communities for all without having to tie them to people).
  • There's a lot of silence around issues (including around incarceration).
  • Internalising disavowals and relations to academic functions.
  • Academics worked, whether they intended to or not, to sever movements from the working class and hand them to the elites (who deradicalise it).
  • We shouldn't be laundering language. Language is important. (Obvious statement, but we need to remember it.)
  • Research: promissory narratives and their impacts.
  • We're all reading through filters because we're not reading people directly. A lot of prison narratives, for example, are found quoted in other thinkers' texts (or are discussed in their texts). We're not getting the whole picture.
  • Intersectionality is additive, not a goal in and of itself. It's necessary, but it cannot be the goal. (Again, this connects to the failure to recognise how different identities play in different environments, so just saying the goal is "intersectionality" doesn't do much of anything.)
  • Ideology is important, it means something.
  • "I have no answers, just thoughts."
  • "I trust whatever surprises the academy."
  • Exceptionality as protection (a lot of people seem to think that they can become the "exceptional" other while assimilating into a system and that it will protect them... but it never does).
  • Art and survival mode lead to novel ideas (which need to be supported or explored).
  • "I don't see a counter to organised terror."
  • "People who go to war really have clarity of sight." (Doesn't just mean military endeavours but people who are in the thick of things and are fighting for their survival and that of others.)
  • "Everything is, in its own way, dissolving."
  • "Dragons are made because they're tortured in dungeons."
  • Abolition was never about the prison; it was about empire and the world.
  • "The State's not going to let you pass." (Creation becomes commodity or it gets driven to despair or destruction.)
  • Do anything effective and you'll meet the State's structure; if you're ineffective, they won't care and will leave you alone (for a while -- "long leash").
  • Celebrities don't have any blueprints or templates for designing a better world; they have little to add.
  • People in prison who have taught classes in prison have received abuse for doing something that simple (especially because it's in the interest of the State for people in prison to remain ignorant to the history coming before them).
  • Elites (e.g., academia) is not where liberatory imagination is, and it's an odd thought if someone even believes that to be true. (So correct.)
  • Paper/Zine archives to check out: Crossroad and New African Liberation and Nation Time (didn't find an archive)
  • Name to look into: Charlene Mitchell
  • White people paying for HCBUs in order to create a Black elite (creates class divisions and encourages assimilation).
  • WEB Du Bois: The Talented Tenth (revised the Guiding Hundredth because the "salvation of the African American should not be left to a select few" - repudiation of the elite?).
  • "Looking for leadership where it wasn't supposed to be."
  • Not always combative but loving (physical encouragement).
  • The State uses love and labour to stabilise itself (concept of the captive maternal).
    • "Every time we stabilise, they build upon that stability."
  • Question remaining: How do we tunnel out of this?

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