JACKIE WANG on Carceral Capitalism /189

Photo by Noemí García Reimunde; Artist Unknown.

Predatory lending and parasitic governance are propelling our society into a condition of extreme instability. In the wake of the initial economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, we are already seeing local governments authorize austerity measures, like increased policing and incarceration to fill revenue gaps. Coupled with the dramatically heightened police presence in our communities at this moment, we find ourselves standing at the precipice of an even more militarized, surveilled, and technocratic world. To resist the conjuring of this hostile future, we need to engage in some serious social visioning. This week, we are joined by Jackie Wang to discuss the function of the carceral state amidst late-stage capitalism and the pervasiveness of the debt economy. Jackie calls us to disrupt what we’ve normalized, break state-sanctioned cycles of harm, and reallocate our collective resources in the name of taking care of our communities. 

“When the municipalities and the states are suffering financially, they’re just going to resort to extracting from poor people.”

— Jackie Wang / Episode 189

Photo of Jackie Wang
by Sasha Pedro

Jackie Wang is a black studies scholar, poet, multimedia artist, and Assistant Professor of Culture and Media at the New School’s Eugene Lang College. She received her PhD in African and African American Studies at Harvard University and was recently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the author of Carceral Capitalism (Semiotexte, 2018), a book on the racial, economic, political, legal, and technological dimensions of the US carceral state. She has also published a number of punk zines including On Being Hard Femme and a collection of dream poems titled Tiny Spelunker of the Oneiro-Womb.

In the course of our conversation with Jackie, we explore the pervasiveness of debt, our temporal and spatial understandings of prisons, and the technological dimensions of surveillance and incarceration. We ask how we can resist the accession of predictive policing and what can digital carceral infrastructure reveal about the state’s growing surveillance apparatus? We close in conversation by discussing Jackie’s scholarship in the dream state, exploring how dreams can act as a conduit for respite, communication, and disruptions. 

♫ Music by Jackie Wang

You can follow Jackie on Twitter @LoneberryWang, listen to her album The Brain Flower Tapes here, or follow her Tumblr.

Episode References

Why Mitch McConnell Wants States to Go Bankrupt

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein

Race for Profit by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Neoliberalism and the City by David Harvey

Reading Recommendations from Jackie

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman

Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination by Robin D.G. Kelley

Skins of Columbus: A Dream Ethnography by Edgar Garcia

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