Abolition Feminism and Jumping Scale: Transformative Justice as a Way of Life

Abolition feminism builds on the concept of “abolition democracy” as articulated by W.E.B. DuBois and Angela Y. Davis. They argued that in order to abolish slavery as well as institutions that furthered the afterlife of slavery, such as the prison industrial complex, it was necessary to simultaneously build a wide array of democratic institutions that would make slavery and the prison system unthinkable. In doing so, it further becomes clear that real democracy is inconsistent with slavery and the prison industrial complex. Similarly, abolition feminism signals that it is not possible to end carceral systems without a systemic gender analysis. At the same time, a liberatory feminist politic is inconsistent with an investment in carcerality. An abolitionist feminist politic is also ideally rooted in creativity and provisionality as it is primarily centered, not in just ending carceral systems, but creating systems of governance and sociality based on principles of horizontality, mutuality and relationality. At the same time, because many strands of abolition feminism tend to focus on the corporeal effects of gender violence on an individual scale, its practices are often presumed to only work on a smaller scale. This work will engage Laura Harjo’s analysis to look at how “jumping scale” can be used to connected the corporeal to a global praxis for transformation.