In Violence Work Micol Seigel offers a new theorization of the quintessential incarnation of stat... more In Violence Work Micol Seigel offers a new theorization of the quintessential incarnation of state power: the police. Foregrounding the interdependence of policing, the state, and global capital, Seigel redefines policing as “violence work,” showing how it is shaped by its role of channeling state violence. She traces this dynamic by examining the formation, demise, and aftermath of the U.S. State Department's Office of Public Safety (OPS), which between 1962 and 1974 specialized in training police forces internationally. Officially a civilian agency, the OPS grew and operated in military and counterinsurgency realms in ways that transgressed the borders that are meant to contain the police within civilian, public, and local spheres. Tracing the career paths of OPS agents after their agency closed, Seigel shows how police practices writ large are rooted in violence—especially against people of color, the poor, and working people—and how understanding police as a civilian, public, and local institution legitimizes state violence while preserving the myth of state benevolence.
Prison is the most powerful engine of racialization in the United States today. While radical imp... more Prison is the most powerful engine of racialization in the United States today. While radical imprisoned intellectuals have compelled large activist-scholar audiences, the ones who are not radicalized by their prison experiences are just as important to understand. This essay explores racial identification among people incarcerated at a medium-security facility in Indiana where the author teaches, noting both reactionary anti-racialism and expressions of commonality with African American history and struggle. The author brings together Foucault, Gramsci, Stuart Hall, theorists of anti-blackness, and abolitionist scholar-activists to analyze this complex white supremacist anti-racialism. Keywords: race, prison, white supremacy, anti-blackness, racialization, Indiana, abolition ********** Quando voce for convidado prasubirno adro Da fundacao casa de Jorge Amado Pra ver do alto a fila de soldados, quase todos pretos Dando porrada na nuca de malandros pretos De ladroes mulatos e outros ...
Comparable or Connected? Afro-Diasporic Subjectivity and State Response in 1920s Sao Paulo and Ch... more Comparable or Connected? Afro-Diasporic Subjectivity and State Response in 1920s Sao Paulo and Chicago Micol Seigel Bowdoin College The descendants of Africans brought to the Americas as slaves have met racism with a dazzling array of responses. When observers have ...
ALSO BY THOMAS BENDER Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Americ... more ALSO BY THOMAS BENDER Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century America The Making of American Society (coauthor) Community and Social Change in America New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York, from 1750 to the Beginnings ...
In Violence Work Micol Seigel offers a new theorization of the quintessential incarnation of stat... more In Violence Work Micol Seigel offers a new theorization of the quintessential incarnation of state power: the police. Foregrounding the interdependence of policing, the state, and global capital, Seigel redefines policing as “violence work,” showing how it is shaped by its role of channeling state violence. She traces this dynamic by examining the formation, demise, and aftermath of the U.S. State Department's Office of Public Safety (OPS), which between 1962 and 1974 specialized in training police forces internationally. Officially a civilian agency, the OPS grew and operated in military and counterinsurgency realms in ways that transgressed the borders that are meant to contain the police within civilian, public, and local spheres. Tracing the career paths of OPS agents after their agency closed, Seigel shows how police practices writ large are rooted in violence—especially against people of color, the poor, and working people—and how understanding police as a civilian, public, and local institution legitimizes state violence while preserving the myth of state benevolence.
Prison is the most powerful engine of racialization in the United States today. While radical imp... more Prison is the most powerful engine of racialization in the United States today. While radical imprisoned intellectuals have compelled large activist-scholar audiences, the ones who are not radicalized by their prison experiences are just as important to understand. This essay explores racial identification among people incarcerated at a medium-security facility in Indiana where the author teaches, noting both reactionary anti-racialism and expressions of commonality with African American history and struggle. The author brings together Foucault, Gramsci, Stuart Hall, theorists of anti-blackness, and abolitionist scholar-activists to analyze this complex white supremacist anti-racialism. Keywords: race, prison, white supremacy, anti-blackness, racialization, Indiana, abolition ********** Quando voce for convidado prasubirno adro Da fundacao casa de Jorge Amado Pra ver do alto a fila de soldados, quase todos pretos Dando porrada na nuca de malandros pretos De ladroes mulatos e outros ...
Comparable or Connected? Afro-Diasporic Subjectivity and State Response in 1920s Sao Paulo and Ch... more Comparable or Connected? Afro-Diasporic Subjectivity and State Response in 1920s Sao Paulo and Chicago Micol Seigel Bowdoin College The descendants of Africans brought to the Americas as slaves have met racism with a dazzling array of responses. When observers have ...
ALSO BY THOMAS BENDER Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Americ... more ALSO BY THOMAS BENDER Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century America The Making of American Society (coauthor) Community and Social Change in America New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York, from 1750 to the Beginnings ...
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