Where do I want my research to take me. I want to root in the teachings of black abolitionist women and bell hooks conceptions of love- an activity- and anticapitalism. I have also been thinking about a particular conversation I have had with my manager, wherein we were discussing company loyalty and the idea of service compensation. To say more, we were disagreeing on the idea of service (to the country or community) in exchange for later care. For instance, volunteering a length of time (say three years) to then be later “rewarded” for this service. And to me it all felt far to limited of an approach to communal living. This is to say that this thinking struck me as wound up in a capitalist exchange service- you do this for me and we do this for you. My own counterpoint was that people need not prove their worthiness to receive care. Which is why I have named the title of this second part of my research Commune: A Counterculture of Care. I hope to delve into the idea of community justice, engagement, accountability, and care that can guide us not only to utopian futures but reconnect us with our past. Thanks to abolitionist thinking we know that the systems of surveillance in place today- the police, the military, large transnational corporations- are not inevitable nor needed. However, capitalistic thinking and endless hunger for profits has obfuscated the human connection. This is to say that we are more likely to bring in an outsider- the police- to resolve conflict, and thus situating a punitive justice system as the fulcrum of our conflict resolution, rather than engaging in a process of empathetic accountability rooted in active love and communal healing.
What does Community mean? What does community do? I am heavily influenced by the ideas of prison abolition and anti-capitalism. What does this mean though and how are these frameworks connected to community building? Prison abolition removes the aspect of state surveillance and oppression that disproportionately affects people of color but works to shackle us all in a constant state of isolation. This is done through the actual separation of, particularly, people of color- but inclusive of those with mental illness, poor people, people without houses or basic necessities, disabled people, immigrants- from white, middle-class and affluent, able bodied, heterosexual (and now increasing homonormative) people.
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