THE POLITICAL THEORY WORKSHOP PRESENTS

Beyond the Prison: The Politics of Abolition

Anna Terwiel, Political Science, Trinity College
with commentary by Benjamin Stumpf, Political Science, UConn
February 25, 2022 April 1, 2022 from 12:15–1:30pm, Oak 408 and by Zoom

Many contemporary abolitionists argue that “carceral feminists” have contributed to mass incarceration by supporting criminal justice approaches to end sexual and gender violence. Instead of the criminal justice system, these “abolition feminists” advocate grassroots transformative justice initiatives that work outside of state institutions and the law. Community justice initiatives often showcase powerful assertions of feminist political agency, as Terweil shows through a close examination of Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA). However, she argues that abolition feminists’ anti-statism ultimately limits their ability to realize widespread radical change. She challenges this anti-statism by showing, first, that in other contexts, prominent abolitionists seek to seize state capacities and resources. Such efforts are important, Terweil suggests, not only to address the root causes of harm but also to counter right-wing militias and other forms of neoliberal and conservative anti-statism. She concludes by suggesting that some legal-institutional proposals of earlier European abolitionist scholar-activists, who oppose prisons and criminal law but see a role for the state in facilitating restorative justice processes, could productively inform US abolitionism.

Anna Terwiel is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College. Her research engages political theory, feminist theory, critical carceral studies, and medical humanities. She is currently completing a book project, The Challenge of Prison Abolition, which aims to clarify abolitionism’s goals and strengthen its outcomes by carefully engaging with its internal tensions and debates. Her articles have been published in Political Theory, New Political Science, Theory & Event, and Social Philosophy Today.

Benjamin Stumpf is a doctoral student in political theory at UConn.

With generous support from the UConn Humanities Institute.

Questions? Email jane.gordon@uconn.edu

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Enemies of the State: The Black Panther Party’s Phenomenological Approach to Solidarity

Brooks Kirchgassner, Ph.D. Student, Political Science, UConn
with commentary by Benjamin Stumpf, Ph.D. Student, Political Science, UConn
April 5th, 2021, 12:15–1:30pm on Zoom

What are the conditions of possibility in which those who are raced white could create and augment a political alliance based on practices of solidarity with individuals who are raced as non-white? What about individuals who identify as racially mixed, or multi-racial with people who identify as mono-racial? This paper argues that a phenomenological approach is best suited to understanding the function of race in the Black Panther Party’s organizing efforts in creating The Rainbow Coalition in Chicago, Illinois, the implications and conclusions of which could potentially be applied to efforts of interracial solidarities in other contexts in the U.S. (or other settler-colonial societies).

As a direct challenge to liberal, state-based solutions to racist institutions, Kirchgassner argues that the Panthers’ strategy was a phenomenological, and radical, one in that they did not view racial identity as innate or purely external to one’s self (Monahan 2011). Instead, the Panthers’ goal in building a Rainbow Coalition was to lay the foundations of a political solidarity that would not only have Black, white, Latinx, and Indigenous peoples work together to achieve specific goals, but transform how these individuals and groups saw themselves as political agents in creating de-centered community spaces to respond to the needs that the state (local and federal) ignored. With white participants, this involved a conscious refusal to participate in what Charles Mills calls the “civic and political responsibilities” of white members of the racial contract (1997, 14), in particular the “structured blindness and opacities” of the white racial order.

With generous support from the UConn Humanities Institute.