Abolitionist Intimacies

Review\nJones argues that intimacy is vital to the movement for justice and liberation in the carceral state. ― The best Canadian nonfiction of 2022, CBC Books\nAbolitionist Intimacies is an urgently needed text. Drawing from years of organizing experience, Jones’ work as a Black feminist theorist, activist and scholar skillfully draws attention to the banal violence of carcerality in Canada and the ongoing work of freedom-oriented struggle. With rigour, theoretical agility and a grounded sense of integrity, Jones forwards a poetic vision of intimacy, care, and human liberation, sketching out abolitionist futures beyond policing, prisons, and cages. -- Robyn Maynard, author of Policing Black Lives\nEl Jones has gifted us all with a political beacon for liberation and an ethical compass for how to be. This stunning book is a powerful narration of how abolitionist futures are built in the present - through Black feminist abolitionist intimacies of witnessing, relationality, organizing, communing, and co-resistance. Abolitionist Intimacies is a searingly lyrical, poignant and revolutionary must-read; an absolute tour de force that I cannot recommend highly enough. -- Harsha Walia, author Undoing Border Imperialism and Border and Rule\nA powerful collection of poetry, political analysis, and personal reflection from an inspiring scholar-activist who connects mind, heart, body, and soul to express the meaning of abolition in so-called Canada. El Jones takes her reader from the kitchen table to the prison waiting room, from Angela Davis to Idle No More, from grief to rage to ‘joyous loudness.’ Refusing to gloss over the complexity of building solidarity against racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism, El Jones takes time to linger in those moments of intimacy and care that sustain movements for collective liberation. A must-read for anyone who wants to remember what it means to be human in the face of systemic violence. -- Lisa Guenther, Queen’s National Scholar of Political Philosophy and Critical Prison Studies, Queen’s University, and author of Solitary Confinement: Social Death and its Afterlives\nThrough poetry, song, memos, journalism, and academic essays informed by the Black feminist tradition and years of work with criminalized and illegalized people, Abolitionist Intimacies makes visible the many injustices of the present while articulating a vision for a caring future free from state, corporate, and interpersonal violence. From cover to cover, El Jones shares a creative approach to abolitionist critique and praxis that, intervention by intervention, works to dismantle and build alternatives to carcerality in the lives of human beings that are targets of structural and interpersonal violence fuelled by white supremacy and racism, sexism, heterosexism, capitalism, and ableism. This book is a must-read for those seeking a clear picture of how the Canadian carceral state operates, the devastating impacts of its laws, institutions, policies, and practices on people and communities pushed to the margins, and what is possible when we come together to collectively resist and build alternative ways of relating to each other to produce real safety and liberation. -- Justin Piché, Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Ottawa and Editor of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons.\nAbolitionist Intimacies offers an absorbing blend of prose and poetry that showcases the author’s talent for speaking undiluted truth to power. -- Evelyn C. White ― Atlantic Books Canada\nAbolitionist Intimacies holds the reader’s attention with its poetry and pace. Jones continues to give voice and embodiment to the realities of doing, living, and feeling this work. -- Ashley Marshall ― Spring Magazine\nIn Abolitionist Intimacies, El Jones examines the movement to abolish prisons through the Black feminist principles of care and collectivity. Understanding the history of prisons in Canada in their relationship to