love and innocence in the thrall of carcerality
Emma Ajdari, gervaise alexis savvias

Capitalism, carceral logics, and the state alienates us from each other; from our communities.

In the face of this logic, how might we knit forms of community, care, and revolutionary love for each other? Taking Jackie Wang’s essay, ‘Against Innocence’ (Carceral Capitalism, 2018) as an entry point, this seminar will be concerned with discussing revolutionary love in the face of carcerality.

Carcerality can be defined as an organising system and structure that extends beyond the prison-industrial complex, and has become ingrained into our very own interpersonal relationships and wider social interactions. Social media has led us to be believe that we do not “owe anyone anything”, and a slight inconvenience from a friend is figured as a reason to get rid of them from your life under the guise of “protecting your peace”. These microcosmic manifestations are altogether enmeshed with a logic of carcerality. By drawing out Wang’s thinking on the politics of ‘innocence’ and its material relation to racialised and non-white bodies, we will explore how we might resist state violence, the pitfalls of language and individuation, and continue to enact love and care in the current political and social climate.

For after all,

‘Love has never been a popular movement.’
––from ‘Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris’, dir. Terrence Dixon, 1970

Keywords:
carcerality, revolutionary love, care, innocence, anticolonialism

gervaise alexis savvias (they/them) is a writer and artist-researcher based between Amsterdam and Nicosia. They are a graduating student in the Critical Studies Department at the Sandberg Instituut, and currently working in the Lectoraat Art and Spatial Praxis at Rietveld Sandberg Research. Their practice figures itself through an entanglement of speculative historiography, cultural criticism, hauntology, and the mysticism of the chance encounter. Their most recent work is concerned with figuring and languaging a sociopolitical otherwise.

Emma Ajdari (she/her) is a writer, researcher, and former paralegal aid. Ajdari holds a double-bachelor degree in Law and Philosophy, and a LLM in International Migration and Refugee Law from the VU Amsterdam. Her ongoing research, writing, and performative work is focused on themes present in migration and mobility structures—specifically representation, algorithmic materialities, and the role of documentation within this practice. She is particularly interested in demystifying the racist rhetoric and logic surrounding migration. Ajdari is a graduating student in the Critical Studies Department at the Sandberg Instituut.