Publishers Weekly
03/01/2021
Walcott (Queer Returns), a professor of gender studies at the University of Toronto, delivers a clear-eyed assessment of the links between property, policing, and the subjugation of Black people. Taking inspiration from the Rastafarian example of “how transformation can happen in the midst of ongoing forms of subjection and suffering,” Walcott draws parallels between calls to defund the police in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the 19th-century abolitionist movement, and notes that the earliest specialized police forces were established to police slaves in his native Barbados in the 17th century. Walcott also claims that the war on drugs in the 1990s gave rise to a “prison industrial complex” that disproportionately imprisons Black people while providing jobs for whites displaced by deindustrialization; he also asserts that police reform efforts, including hiring more minority officers and establishing outposts in underserved neighborhoods, fail because they only “further cement the position policing occupies in our lives.” The answer, Walcott contends, is to redirect resources currently earmarked for “caging people” to education, health care, and other social programs that have been gutted by neoliberalism. Though he offers little practical discussion of how to achieve defunding, Walcott’s analysis of the ways in which white supremacy is baked into the legal systems of Canada and the U.S. is stimulating. Progressives will embrace this well-conceived call for change. (June)
From the Publisher
Praise for On Property
“Masterful. A powerful tract … Rinaldo Walcott’s gift is that he makes what seems preposterous to most seem like common sense: abolish property as a completion of abolishing slavery as a means to solving the savagery of modern policing. A mad idea? Perhaps, but I found it hard to argue with his logic. As the Rastafari would say: bun Babylon!”—Globe and Mail
“A clear-eyed assessment of the links between property, policing, and the subjugation of Black people ... Walcott’s analysis of the ways in which white supremacy is baked into the legal systems of Canada and the U.S. is stimulating. Progressives will embrace this well-conceived call for change.”—Publishers Weekly
"[A]n eye-opening sequence of ideas in coolly passionate prose."—Mark Abley, The Walrus
“Running a brief but far-reaching and punchy 96 pages, On Property has an absolute certainty of purpose: calling for the abolition of private property ownership ... [If] statements such as ‘the problem of property is resolved through its removal’ or calls to ‘abolish everything’ can make some people quake, when Walcott’s pamphlet argues for the human ability to reconsider and rebuild societal structures, the stances come across as sensible and, better yet, doable.”—Toronto Star
"On Property is a must-read not only for those already responsive to the call of abolition but also perhaps more importantly for those who are not."—University of Toronto Quarterly
"Rinaldo Walcott locates his contribution to the Field Notes series on current issues, On Property, in the present political moment, while using historical references and events to argue for the abolition of police and property ... Walcott concludes his case by asking for a new ethics of care and economy that does not keep feeding into the incarceration system, a system rigged to continue Black suffering ... It is a question we must ask ourselves after reflecting on the ways in which we, too, are complicit."—Quill & Quire
“Urgent, far-reaching and with a profound generosity of care, the wisdom in On Property is absolute. We cannot afford to ignore or defer its teachings. Now is the time for us-collectively-to take up the challenge in this undeniable gift of a book.”—Canisia Lubrin, author of The Dyzgraphxst and Voodoo Hypothesis
“Provocative and persuasive. Rinaldo Walcott’s insightful unmasking of the historic baggage associated with private property challenges us to face up to what might be the source of our most pressing social problems.”—Cecil Foster, author of They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada
"Rinaldo Walcott is one of the most renowned and dynamic articulators of the Black radical tradition. His writings are essential for anyone seeking deeper engagement with the social and political movements urgently afoot today."—David Chariandy, author of Brother and I've Been Meaning to Tell You
Praise for Rinaldo Walcott
“Essential reading. From its first paragraphs Rinaldo Walcott's The Long Emancipation shifts the axis of thought about Black freedom. The astonishing and devastating idea at the center of this book lays out the condition of Black being in the Americas as existing, still, in a state of juridical unfreedom. Once that idea's recalibrating weight and urgency strike you, you must think again where analysis and theory begin. You must begin again.”—Dionne Brand, poet, novelist, essayist
“In The Long Emancipation Rinaldo Walcott has opened up whole new avenues for thinking about the causes and conditions, the global logics of ‘unfreedom’ that continue to haunt and imperil Black lives. This rich collection of provocations challenges us to consider the terms and possibilities of living beyond the death zones and extractive economies of capitalism; it invites us to see and feel the audacious eruptions of a blackness exceeding these limits—moving and struggling toward freedom.”—Deborah E. McDowell, University of Virginia
“Each chapter of BlackLife carefully weaves together analyses of history, philosophy, policy, art, and activism to create a fuller picture of Black Canadian existence.”—Briarpatch Magazine
“Black Life: Post-BLM and the Struggle For Freedom is a short volume, but one of the most important intellectual interventions to emerge in Canada in recent years. It ought to be required reading in Canadian Studies and other social science and arts courses at both secondary and post-secondary levels across the country. Above all, it ought to be taken seriously by those—especially white Canadians—with the ability to apply its insights in public policy and private lives alike.”—Rhea Rollmann at PopMatters
