Queer as in Abolition Now!

Abstract

Abstract “Queer as in Abolition Now!” introduces the special issue “Queer Fire: Liberation and Abolition.” The issue brings together scholars, artists, and writers working at the intersections of queer theory, critical race studies, and radical activist movements to consider prison abolition as a project of queer liberation and queer liberation as an abolitionist project. Pushing beyond observations that prisons disproportionately harm queer people, the contributors demonstrate that gender itself is a carceral system and demand that gender and sexuality, too, be subject to abolition. Drawing on methodologies from the social sciences, humanities, and fine arts, contributors offer fresh vocabularies and analytical lenses to the ongoing work of constructing liberatory futures without prisons, police, or the tyranny of colonial gender systems.