Against the Carceral Archive

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"Against the Carceral Archive" is a meditation on the "carceral archival project," distilling critical, theoretical, and activist insights from prison abolitionists over the past three decades. Drawing from five collections at the Southern California Library, it explores carcerality as the primary mode of state governance over Black populations in the U.S. since the 1960s. Each chapter examines aspects of the carceral archive, focusing on its destabilization, destruction, and containment of Black life. Topics include the archive's definition of humanity and the creation of "pejorative blackness," the intertwined roles of police and military in upholding racial capitalism, and the impact of technology on counterintelligence and counterinsurgency. Notably, the work highlights the carceral archive's failure to obliterate "Black communal logics" and radical forms of knowledge production that challenge its authority and foster alternative ways of living. Concluding with a call for reckoning with radical traditions of thought and existence, the author makes a compelling case for centering Blackness as a means to resist the exploitative tendencies of Western epistemology, advocating for life-affirming practices.