Description
Book SynopsisStephen Dillon examines the literary and artistic work of feminist, queer antiracist activists who were imprisoned or became fugitives in the United States during the 1970s, showing how they were among the first to theorize and make visible the co-constitutive symbiotic relationship between neoliberalism and racialized mass-incarceration.
Trade Review"Dillon’s overall project returns a genealogy of antiprison politics to con-temporary queer theoretical debates on temporality, fugitivity, and desire. ... [His] text is thus not only a valuable contribution to Black feminist thought and queer studies but also a model for abolition itself." -- Cameron Clark * GLQ *
"This is an excellent book for our times, an era provoking fresh outrage over children in cages and the brutal treatment of bodies fleeing violence by states that claim to honor human rights. It is a time to bathe in the spirit of many of the authors Dillon presents.
Fugitive Life is a compelling reminder of the logics of the carceral state as they have been unfolding over centuries, and the inevitable — if frequently intangible —logics of resistance that also result." -- Keally McBride * Politics and Gender *
“In
Fugitive Life, Stephen Dillon uses the writings of fugitive activists to analyze how gender, race, and sexuality were deployed in the development of a new system of power in 1970: the neoliberal-carceral state. The book is beautifully written and a significant intervention that is sure to become a foundational text in a number of academic fields.” -- Erin Mayo-Adam * Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics *
“Beautifully written,
Fugitive Life is a key text for readers in American studies, criminology, queer studies, Black studies, and—keenly—for those of us who count ourselves as ongoing scholars of, and participants in, radical social and political movements.” -- Melanie Brazzell and Erica R. Meiners * QED *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction. "Escape-Bound Captives": Race, Neoliberalism, and the Force of Queerness 1
1. "We're Not Hiding but We're Invisible": Law and Order, the Temporality of Violence, and the Queer Fugitive 27
2. Life Escapes: Neoliberal Economics, the Underground, and Fugitive Freedom 54
3. Possessed by Death: Black Feminism, Queer Temporality, and the Afterlife of Slavery 84
4. "Only the Sun Will Bleach His Bones Quicker": Desire, Police Terror, and the Affect of Queer Feminist Futures 119
Conclusion. "Being Captured Is Beside the Point": A World beyond the World 143
Notes 155
Bibliography 171
Index 185
