organized by semiotext(e)
join us for an afternoon with jackie wang. she will read and discuss her latest book, carceral capitalism. book signing to follow. semiotext(e) will provide copies for sale at event.
about carceral capitalism:
"the crisis of 21st century policing and prisons, writes jackie wang in carceral capitalism, is a story about nerds and cops." in wang’s brilliant new book—released this past february by mit’s semiotext(e) / intervention series—the racist cop, judge, and banker fade to the background, all but replaced by a figureless but no less nefarious avatar: the algorithm. 'color-blind' predictive policing tools dispatch cops to terrorize black and brown neighborhoods, while recidivist models dole out racially-biased sentences and credit reports use zip codes as a proxy for race. the technologies may have evolved, but the prerogative remains the same: to police, to contain, to profit.
'at its core, carceral capitalism asks a seemingly simple question: what is the price of policing and prisons? wang offers an incisive critique of 21st century racial capitalism. she exposes the financial 'inclusion' of black and brown low-income communities through subprime lending as a new form of racialized accumulation, and traces the neoliberal state’s abdication of its responsibility as a provider of social services in favor of its role as guarantor of 'security'” but despite the depth of wang’s political economic analysis, she is equally concerned with the crushing psychological and moral costs of mass incarceration, a system which—despite its promise of safety for white america—she describes as fundamentally 'anti-life.'"
mark tseng-putterman, the margins
jackie wang is a student of the dream state, black studies scholar, prison abolitionist, poet, performer, library rat, trauma monster and phd candidate at harvard university. she is the author of carceral capitalism (semiotexte / mit press), a number of punk zines including on being hard femme, and a collection of dream poems titled tiny spelunker of the oneiro-womb (capricious). find her @loneberrywang and loneberry.tumblr.com.