Brick-by-Brick, Wall-by-Wall: Co-Producing Transnational Feminist Abolitionist Knowledges

With Shaimaa AbdelkarimSilvana Tapia Tapia

Since the 2010s, global uprisings against authoritarianism, corruption, and coercive overreach (e.g., the Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, End SARS) have brought discussions on prison and police abolition into mainstream social justice agendas. These debates are crucial to address militarisation, carceral violence, and totalitarianism worldwide, and include feminist perspectives on abolition and anti-carceral justice across the global North and South. However, limited resources to cross geographical and language barriers have hindered the formation of transnational networks. Making abolitionist approaches to justice understandable and imaginable to the public is also a key collective challenge. Additionally, collaboration among academics, activists and grassroots organisers is infrequent and largely confined to the global North. Therefore, establishing a South-North forum for knowledge exchange is vital.