Active Intolerance Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition

by Zurn, Perry; Dilts, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9781137510662
• ISBN10: 1137510668
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-11-17
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays on Le Groupe d'information sur les prisons (The Prisons Information Group, the GIP). The GIP was a radical activist group, extant between 1970 and 1973, in which Michel Foucault was heavily involved. It aimed to facilitate the circulation of information about living conditions in French prisons and, over time, it catalyzed several revolts and instigated minor reforms. In Foucault's words, the GIP sought to identify what was 'intolerable' about the prison system and then to produce 'an active intolerance' of that same intolerable reality. To do this, the GIP 'gave prisoners the floor,' so as to hear from prisoners themselves what to resist and how. The essays collected here explore the GIP's resources both for Foucault studies and for prison activism today.

Author Biography

Andrew Dilts is Assistant Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at Loyola Marymount University, USA.

Perry Zurn is Visiting Assistant Professor of philosophy at Hampshire College, USA.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Foreword; Bernard Harcourt
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Active Intolerance: An Introduction; Perry Zurn and Andrew Dilts
PART I: HISTORY: THE GIP AND FOUCAULT IN CONTEXT
1. The Abolition of Philosophy; Ladelle McWhorter
2. The Untimely Speech of the GIP Counter-Archive; Lynne Huffer
3. Conduct and Power: Foucault's Methodological Expansions in 1971; Colin Koopman
4. Work and Failure: Assessing the Prisons Information Group; Perry Zurn
Intolerable 1: Abu Ali Abdur'Rahman
PART II: BODY: RESISTANCE AND THE POLITICS OF CARE
5. Breaking the Conditioning: The Relevance of the Prisons Information Group; Steve Champion (Adisa Kamara)
6. Between Discipline and Care-giving: Changing Prison Population Demographics and Possibilities for Self-Transformation; Dianna Taylor
7. Unruliness without Rioting: Hunger Strikes in Contemporary Politics; Falguni Sheth
Intolerable 2: Derrick Quintero
PART III: VOICE: PRISONERS AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL
8. Disrupted Foucault: Los Angeles' Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA) and the Obsolescence of White Academic Raciality; Dylan Rodríguez
9. Investigations from Marx to Foucault; Marcelo Hoffman
10. The GIP as a Neoliberal Intervention: Trafficking in Illegible Concepts; Shannon Winnubst
11. The Disordering of Discourse: Voice and Authority in the GIP; Nancy Luxon
Intolerable 3: Donald Middlebrooks
PART IV: PRESENT: THE PRISON AND ITS FUTURE(S)
12. Beyond Guilt and Innocence: The Creaturely Politics of Prisoner Resistance Movements; Lisa Guenther
13. Resisting 'Massive Elimination': Foucault, Immigration, and the GIP; Natalie Cisneros
14. 'Can They Ever Escape?': Foucault, Black Feminism, and the Intimacy of Abolition; Stephen Dillon
Notes on Contributors
Index