Abolition Today - Einzelansicht

Since the Black Lives Matter uprisings in the summer of 2020 in the aftermath of police killings, calls to defund the police and abolish the prison industrial complex have resonated with many people around the world. Abolition, today, circulates widely as an idea. While the verb “to abolish” seems negative, abolitionists insist that abolition is not just about tearing the current system down, but rendering it obsolete. Contrasted against efforts to reform and improve various systems of social control and enforcement, calls for abolition imagine the complete dismantling of these systems alongside the creation of new modes of addressing harm and providing basic needs. “Abolition is about presence, not absence” as Ruth Wilson Gilmore has said: “it’s about building life-affirming institutions,” in place of current ones, which reproduce, normalize, and proliferate violence. The course will focus on abolition today and will work through the different dimensions of contemporary arguments for abolition (regarding the prison, the police, but also the abolition of borders and the family). We will put current debates into context by exploring interdisciplinary materials that provide critical perspectives on abolition. 

Students enrolled in Seminar 1 will be assessed based on their assignments (3 ECTS; pass/fail); students enrolled in Seminar 2 (“Referat oder Kurzessay”) will be assessed based on their short paper (3 ECTS; graded); students enrolled in Seminar 2 and signed up for a Portfolioprüfung will be assessed based on their long paper (Hausarbeit) (6 ECTS; graded)