Speculating Abolition: Alternatives Models Of Redress In Black And Indigenous Feminist Speculative Fiction
2024-04
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Speculating Abolition: Alternatives Models Of Redress In Black And Indigenous Feminist Speculative Fiction
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2024-04
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Policing and prisons don’t solve the problems of interpersonal and institutional violence and harm, and in fact fail those most vulnerable to violence. Speculating Abolition: Alternative Forms of Redress in Black and Indigenous Feminist Speculative Fiction, analyzes contemporary North American Anglophone fiction from Black and Indigenous women, queer, trans, and Two Spirit people in order to conceive of a world free of the carceral settler state. In the hands of Black and Indigenous peoples, speculating as a gerundive verb form—rather than an adjective—is a distinct practice of reading and creating, defined by its promise of imagining otherwise. Hence, I ask: How do these works help envision alternatives to forms of redress like the criminal punishment system? What do literary texts illustrate as possible options for and limits to resistance in the face of gendered, racialized, and colonial interpersonal and institutional violence? And how can these speculative visions transform broader debates about models of justice? The arc of this project traces ways to enact redress without policing and prisons, instead moving toward healing and away from harm. The introduction grounds the work in an abolitionist feminism that takes seriously the critiques of traditional Western forms of “justice.” My first chapter asks necessary questions of the place of punishment in lieu of the carceral settler state, particularly in the case of egregious crimes like sexual assault witnessed within Octavia Butler’s novel Dawn. The second chapter argues that a crucial part of addressing interpersonal and institutional violence without state apparatuses is to directly confront those who are causing harm, like in Mariame Kaba’s short story “Justice” as well as Cherie Dimaline’s (Métis) The Marrow Thieves. When facing conflict head-on isn’t effective or feasible, my third chapter encourages a turn inward towards those most affected by violence, through the fugitivity, generative refusal, and cultural reclamation seen in Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts and Adam Garnet Jones’s (Cree/Métis) short story “The History of the New World.” Finally, the conclusion speculates about the application of these lessons for scholars and activists to prefigure abolition. Ultimately, I present a case against punitive measures for those who commit harm, by asserting that more restorative and transformative options are reflected in Black and Indigenous feminist literature.
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University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. April 2024. Major: Feminist Studies. Advisors: Aren Aizura, Jigna Desai. 1 computer file (PDF); ii, 216 pages.
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