Possessed by Death: The Neoliberal-Carceral State, Black Feminism, and the Afterlife of Slavery

This article offers a critical genealogy of the neoliberal-carceral state by engaging the writing of Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur. Shakur's work is read as a black feminist theorization of neoliberalism at the very moment of its emergence. By engaging Shakur's discussion of race, gender, time, and the market, the article pursues a connection between chattel slavery and the present that has yet to garner attention among scholars: slavery's haunting possession of neoliberalism. Although slavery's antiblack technologies inhabit and structure the prison, they also live on in the operations of the market. In particular, this article examines the relationship between the carceral, the market, the body, and population to consider how the necropolitics of slavery possess and drive the biopolitics of neoliberalism. The author argues that under neoliberalism, the market not only colludes with the prison, but also mimics it.