Abolition can be a spiritual practice, a spiritual journey, and a
spiritual commitment. What does abolition entail and how can we get
there as a collective and improvisational project?
To
posit the spirituality of abolition is to consider the ways
historical and contemporary movements against slavery; prisons; the
wage system; animal and earth exploitation; racialized, gendered, and
sexualized violence; and the death penalty necessitate epistemologies
that have been foreclosed through violent force by Western
philosophical and theological thought. It is also to claim that the
material conditions that will produce abolition are necessarily
Black, Indigenous, queer and trans, feminist, and also about disabled
and other non-conforming bodies in force and verve.
Spirituality
and Abolition asks: what can prison abolition teach us about
spiritual practice, spiritual journey, spiritual commitment? And,
what can these things underscore about the struggle for abolition as
a desired manifestation of material change in the worlds we currently
inhabit? Collecting writings, poetry, and art from thinkers,
organizers, and incarcerated people, the editors trace the importance
of faith and spirit in our ongoing struggle towards abolitionist
horizons.
