Description

‘A robust, decolonial challenge to carceral feminism’ – Angela Y. Davis

***Winner of an English PEN Award 2022***

The mainstream conversation surrounding gender equality is a repertoire of violence: harassment, rape, abuse, femicide. These words suggest a cruel reality. But they also hide another reality: that of gendered violence committed with the complicity of the State.

In this book, Francoise Verges denounces the carceral turn in the fight against sexism. By focusing on ‘violent men’, we fail to question the sources of their violence. There is no doubt as to the underlying causes: racial capitalism, ultra-conservative populism, the crushing of the Global South by wars and imperialist looting, the exile of millions and the proliferation of prisons – these all put masculinity in the service of a policy of death.

Against the spirit of the times, Francoise Verges refuses the punitive obsession of the State in favour of restorative justice.

Publisher Review

'In this robust, decolonial challenge to carceral feminism, Francoise Verges elucidates why a structural approach to violence is needed. If we wish to understand how racial capitalism is linked to the proliferation of intimate and state violence directed at women and gender-nonconforming people, we need to look no further than Verges' timely analysis' -- Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of California, Santa Cruz 'A powerful and uncompromising text ... A stunning reflection on the recurrence of assault - gender-based, sexual, racial violence' -- 'Terrafemina' 'An important and courageous book, which raises difficult questions and uncovers invisible structures of domination' -- 'Trou Noir' 'Verges's incandescent writing casts a light on the global inequalities, brutal carceral systems, unfettered militarisation and punitive ideologies that shape violent intimacies' -- Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary University of London 'A call to join in the urgent decolonial feminist work of rethinking the practices of (so-called) protection outside of the logics of violence. We have the ability, Verges insists, to enact a post violent society, to bring another world into being' -- Christina Sharpe, Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University, Toronto and author of 'In the Wake: On Blackness and Being' 'A road map of radical emancipatory imaginaries for shaping urgent social and political change. Verges' arguments rise from the ground up, from the lived experience of grassroots dissent, action and mobilisation against the wounds and damages inflicted by extractive capitalism across the world' -- Rasha Salti, curator of art and film