Here are some notes on Denise's text for those interested. Central question: What if blackness referred to rare and obsolete definitions of matter : respectively, “substance … of which something consists” and “substance without form”? How would this affect the question of value? What would become of the economic value of things if they were read as expressions of our modern grammar and its defining logic of obliteration? Would this expose how the object (of exchange, appreciation, and knowledge)—that is, the economic, the artistic, and the scientific thing—cannot be imagined without presupposing an ethical (self-determining) thing, which is its very condition of existence and the determination of value in general. On Blackness as disruptive force: activate blackness’s disruptive force, that is, its capacity to tear the veil of transparency (even if briefly) and disclose what lies at the limits of justice. when deployed as method, blackness fractur...
Thanks for this! I would also add this important link:
ReplyDeletean abolitionist organization in the US with plenty of resources that got started decades ago by Angela Davis and Ruth Gilmore among others,
http://criticalresistance.org/about/not-so-common-language/
As well as, key texts by Ruth Gilmore, The Golden Gulag, and Angela Davis' Are Prisons Obsolete.
And this is the recent 2016-2017 Annual Report by the Correctional Investigator of Canada http://www.oci-bec.gc.ca/cnt/rpt/annrpt/annrpt20162017-eng.aspx
And a letter written by people on the inside demanding change of prison policies in Canada addressed to Trudeau: https://demandprisonschange.wordpress.com/