New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the (After)life of Erica Garner
New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the (After)life of Erica Garner
Joy James
Abolition / Black Radical Tradition / Feminism
New Bones Abolition addresses “those of us broken enough to grow new bones” in order to stabilize our political traditions that renew freedom struggles.
Reflecting on police violence, political movements, Black feminism, Erica Garner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, caretakers and compradors, Joy James analyzes the “Captive Maternal,” which emerges from legacies of colonialism, chattel slavery and predatory policing, to explore the stages of resistance and communal rebellion that manifest through war resistance. She recognizes a long line of gendered and ungendered freedom fighters, who, within a racialized and economically-stratified democracy, transform from coerced or conflicted caretakers into builders of movements, who realize the necessity of maroon spaces, and ultimately the inevitability of becoming war resisters that mobilize against genocide and state violence.
New Bones Abolition weaves a narrative of a historically complex and engaged people seeking to quell state violence. James discusses the contributions of the mother Mamie Till-Mobley who held a 1955 open-casket funeral for her fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, murdered by white nationalists; the 1971 rebels at Attica prison; the resilience of political prisoners despite the surplus torture they endured; the emergence of Black feminists as political theorists; human rights advocates seeking abolition; and the radical intellectualism of Erica Garner, daughter of Eric Garner slain in 2014 by the NYPD.
Joy James positions the Captive Maternal within the evolution of contemporary abolition. Her meditation on, and theorizing of, Black radicals and revolutionaries works to honor Agape-driven communities and organizers that deter state/police predatory violence through love, caretaking, protest, movements, marronage, and war resistance.
Product Details
ISBN: 9781942173748
Published: October 2023
Format: Paperback
Size: 6 x 9 in
Page count: 256
Other Formats
ISBN: 9781942173984
Published: October 2023
Format: EPUB
Reviews
“New Bones Abolition is a reminder that state repression is indiscriminate when it comes to gender—or generation. The NYPD strangled Eric Garner but his daughter Erica refused to accept defeat. Thank you Dr. Joy James for making sure that the flood lights of history will be aimed in the proper direction.”—Kalonji Jama Changa, cofounder of Black Power Media, organizer and founder of FTP Movement, and coproducer of Organizing is the New Cool
“New Bones Abolition offers a series of dialectical engagements with the captive conditions of a racist society alongside an incisive assessment of movement gains, losses, and betrayals. Utilizing the Captive Maternal analytic, Joy James brilliantly maps the continuum from coerced or conflicted caregiving to war resistance against the physical, emotional, and psychological outcomes that are produced under a predatory democracy. We must grow new bones to recoup our generative and reproductive labor from those who enslave and imprison us—new bones that move beyond the rhetorical to materially confront imperialist violence and premature death. James’ thoughtful and urgent work leaves us with a renewed commitment to the unfinished struggle for Black liberation.”—Jalessah T. Jackson, founder of the Decolonial Feminist Collective and Access Reproductive Care Southeast Interim Executive Director
“From caretaking for those on the frontlines to war resistance against deathly policing and imperialism, Joy James details the myriad forms in which a ‘new bones’ abolition might learn from the life of Erica Garner and others. A beautiful love letter to those radicalized by trauma, and a clarion call to join them in the struggle for our collective liberation, New Bones Abolition honors the ancestors of centuries-long and present-day freedom movements and grounds their legacies as inheritances for the rebels and war resisters among us who are fighting for a future without police and state violence.”—Charmaine Chua, University of California, Santa Barbara, Global Studies
“It is impossible to read more than several pages of New Bones Abolition without confronting the long historical terror that saturates the present. This book is animated by the militancy of the Captive Maternal as a vessel of Black radical care and insurgent community, demystifying the liberal/nonprofit hijacking of ‘abolition’ while illuminating collective experiments in liberation that obliterate and make obsolete the anti-Black state—in and beyond the United States. Joy James identifies and dismantles the backdoor liberalism that endorses fraudulent ‘radical’ identities, organizations, and movements, offering a framework for collective study that builds liberationist analyses in the context of an increasingly multilayered, ‘progressive’ and reactionary counterinsurgency. I am grateful for this work.”—Dylan Rodríguez, author of White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide, University of California, Riverside, Department of Black Study and Department of Media and Cultural Studies
“A much needed reflection from the Black radical tradition on the second wave of Black Lives Matter protests following the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. By focusing on caregivers in the movement Joy James not only defines new modes of analysis for our movement, but extends much needed recognition of the crucial role that Black women and other caregivers play in the struggle for Black liberation. Above all, this book is a testament to the power and brilliance of our warrior-sister Erica Garner.”—Michael Bento,#NYCShutItDown and contributor to No Pasarán! Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis
