Ruth Wilson Gilmore has famously said: “Abolition requires that we change one thing, which is everything.” Abolitionists recognize that a radical social transformation is needed to address the root causes of violence and inequality. Yet, as organizers, intellectuals, and collectives, we all too often stop short of saying out loud that oppressed people have a right to armed struggle when effecting the radical changes that are necessary to save our lives. We also often stop short of naming and repeating other strategies such as boycott, strike, direct action, riots, looting, destruction of property, sabotage, and armed resistance. How would a black feminist anarchism engage the project of dismantling and destroying the extractive, exploitative, abusive and murderous colonial systems we inhabit? In this talk, Nathalie Batraville explores how abolitionist discourses, particularly those about accountability, often operate instead by containing and silencing the radicalism that would be necessary to achieve abolition and decolonization.

Speaker

Nathalie Batraville is an Associate Professor at Concordia University’s Simone de Beauvoir Institute, where she teaches in the areas of Black feminisms, queer theory, and prison abolition. A scholar and artist, her work seeks to generate and illuminate frameworks that challenge both state violence and interpersonal violence. Her research has appeared in scholarly publications such as Small Axe, The Journal of Haitian Studies, The CLR James Journal, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, and Tangence. Her first book, Disrupting Agency: Towards a Black Feminist Anarchism, is forthcoming with Duke University Press. In it, she rethinks abolitionist frameworks from a Black feminist anarchist perspective. Through her ceramic art practice, she explores storytelling, plant life, desire, and rebellion.

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