JAWS*2 // Thinking beyond the grasp
This blog post is the first I’ve simultaneously published online and released via email as the JAWS*2 newsletter, which I’ll be doing with all newsletters from now on. If you’d like to receive future posts as emails, with additional curated content, sign up here. Thanks for reading!
Jefferson Davis statue removed from its pedestal on Monument Avenue in Richmond, VA, by anti-racism protestors, June 11, 2020 // NBC 12 News Richmond
Thinking beyond the grasp: Prison architecture, carceral urbanism and abolition
In his 1995 book Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, intellectual and public historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot grappled with the "unthinkability" of the Haitian Revolution, asking, "How does one write the history of the impossible?", for "the idea of enslaved populations rising up and not only resisting slavery but also achieving self-determination and forging entirely new conceptual categories of freedom and equality was beyond the grasp of both observers and participants," in the words of his fellow anthropologist Yarimar Bonilla.
Since the cell-phone camera-recorded lynching of George Floyd on Memorial Day, in the midst of grief and pain, as we process the COVID pandemic and demand justice denied Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Layleen Cubilette-Polanco and so many more Black Americans, possibilities once unthinkable have entered into the realm of popular political discourse in cities across the United States. The abolition of police, prisons and incarceration, long at the core of activism by Angela Y. Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mariame Kaba and others, has earnestly entered opinion pages, public comment cards and City Council chambers. In the worlds of architecture and urban planning where I work, we are beginning to turn our attention to possibilities of abolishing prison architecture and carceral urbanism.
Carceral urbanism is one manifestation of what geographer Brett Story calls 'carceral space', the spaces where people are rendered disposable and consumable by the system of incarceration beyond the walls of prisons and jails through public and private policing, state surveillance, design decisions and policy enforcement. It is a neoliberal operation in which public services are stripped away, and made available only to those who have been placed within the criminal punishment system. Architects and urbanists support it all the time. It's happening right now in New Orleans, where Charity Hospital sits vacant awaiting renovation into an Airbnb hotel while GraceHebertCurtis Architects designs a new mental health facility available only for people incarcerated at Orleans Parish Prison. This is the carceral architecture that advocates like Raphael Sperry have been opposing for decades, now joined by young design justice activists like Mike Ford.
As Washington, DC city employees painted 'Black Lives Matter' in 40-foot letters across 16th Street in Washington, DC last week, researcher and educator Brandi Thompson Summers reminded us that words - even giant ones - cannot substitute for antiracist action. We would do well to follow the examples of visionaries like designer Dana McKinney, author of 'Societal simulations: a carceral geography of restoration'; architect Deanna Van Buren and her team at the restorative justice-focused architectural office Designing Justice+Designing Spaces; urbanist Jay Pitter, who convened a panel this week on responding to anti-Black racism in urbanist practices and conversations; and urban designer Atianna Cordova, founder of WATER BLOCK, whose article 'Racism, design and the built environment' calls design professionals to go beyond "#equity" to transform their practices.
Five more to explore.
Katy Reckdahl chronicles Black New Orleans funeral traditions in the time of COVID-19. Read here.
Raquel Willis on policies and practices to end violence against trans women of color. Read here.
'A-School Call to Action' petition, by students at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. Read and sign here.
'Notes on Credibility', from Black students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design to their administration. Read here.
The City of New Orleans is creating a commission to rename streets and parks named for White supremacists. Read more here.
Thanks again for reading. As always, you are welcome to respond by reply to this email with articles, events, suggestions for subjects to cover and more.