This episode is the first of a two-part focus on the subject of abolition: which denotes both a theoretical approach and a series of political and social movements that advocate the overcoming of violent state institutions such as prisons and the police.
In this episode talk to Vanessa Thompson and Daniel Loick in light of the publication of their German-language reader Abolitionismus, which was published by Suhrkamp in July 2022, and which makes some of the most important voices of the international discussions around Abolition accessible in German for the first time.
We talk about theoretical approaches to abolition, and the question of how these might be translated (both in the literal and wider senses of the word) across different geographic and political contexts, and the kinds of futures that abolition anticipates.
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In conversation with:
Vanessa E. Thompson (Queen’s University, Canada) and Daniel Loick (University of Amsterdam)


Vanessa E. Thompson is a Distinguished Assistant Professor in Black Studies and Social Justice in the Department of Gender Studies at Queen’s University, Canada. Before she moved to Ontario, she was a lecturer at the Institute of Sociology at Goethe University Frankfurt and at the Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences at European University Viadrina. Her scholarship and teaching focuses on black studies and anti-colonialism, abolition, critical racism, migration and gender studies, and activist ethnographies. She has co-edited Abolitionismus. Ein Reader (Suhrkamp, 2022) together with Daniel Loick, a special issue on Black Feminisms with Femina Politica (2021) and her book Black Socialities. Black Urban Activism and the Struggle beyond Recognition in Paris is forthcoming with Manchester University Press. Vanessa is a member of the International Independent Commission on the Death of Oury Jalloh and organizes with abolitionist feminist movements in Europe and globally.
Daniel Loick is Associate Professor of Political and Social Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, where he also leads the research project “Abolition Democracies”. Among his publications are four books, Kritik der Souveränität (Frankfurt 2012, English translation as A Critique of Sovereignty, 2018), Der Missbrauch des Eigentums (Berlin 2016, English translation forthcoming with MIT as The Abuse of Property), Anarchismus zur Einführung (Hamburg 2017), and Juridismus. Konturen einer kritischen Theorie des Rechts (Berlin 2017). Together with Vanessa E. Thompson, he has recently co-edited Abolitionismus. Ein Reader (Berlin 2022)
References:
- Dilts, Andrew. “12. Crisis, Critique, And Abolition.” A time for critique. Columbia University Press, 2019. 230-251.
- Loick, Daniel, Thompson, Vannessa E. Abolitionismus: Ein Reader. Suhrkamp. 2022
- van Dyk, Silke, and Tine Haubner. Community-Kapitalismus. Hamburger Edition HIS, 2021
- Walia, Harsha “There Is No “Migrant Crisis”. Boston Review. November 16, 2022 https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/there-is-no-migrant-crisis/