This Open Review book project accompanies a year-long seminar series entitled Abolition 13/13 at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought ("CCCCT") at Columbia University. The series will explore the movements for abolition today and will work through the different dimensions of contemporary arguments for abolition (regarding the prison, the police, and the death penalty, but also the abolition of property, of capital, of coverture and marital dominion, of oil, and of borders). It will consider the history of the abolition of slavery and the lessons to be learned. It will explore the many arguments for different forms of abolition. It will, hopefully, push us toward an abolitionist future.
Each of the thirteen seminars will include essays by invited guests, reading resources, a web cast recording of the seminar, and other materials.
The seminars are open to the public and simultaneously web cast for those who cannot attend in person. There is also a way to participate in the seminar virtually in order to pose questions and comments.
In Abolition 13/13, we will be reading and discussing these books, among others (the full list bibliography is here):
Davis, Angela. Abolition Democracy. 2005.
Du Bois, W.E.B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. 1935.
Foner, Eric. The Second Founding. 2019.
Foucault, Michel. The Punitive Society. 2015.
Franke, Katherine. Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition. 2019.
Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party. 1848
Roberts, Dorothy. Killing the Black Body. 1997.
Vitale, Alex. The End of Policing. 2017.
Our guests at the seminars will include Tendayi Achiume, Amna Akbar, Amy Allen, Etienne Balibar, Seyla Benhabib, Ican Calaff, Joseph Carens, Dennis Childs, Robert Gooding-Williams, Alexis Hoag, Daniele Lorenzini, Karuna Mantena, Reinhold Martin, Ian Manual, Allegra McLeod, Dorothy Roberts, Martin Saar, Kendall Thomas, Josmar Trujillo, Alex Vitale, and Bruce Western, among others. They will be in conversation with Columbia University faculty and affiliates of the CCCCT.
You can learn more about the Abolition 13/13 series on its website here and about the CCCCT here.