This paper approaches accomplice work via an exploration of key concepts developed in black social theory, where ‘black’ indexes capacious traditions of subversive political and social thought, and not simply an epidermal characteristic or descriptor. The paper begins by laying waste to allyship, then describes accomplice work as a contradistinctive praxis through which those who might understand themselves as white unravel and unbecome themselves. A paraontological blackness, I propose, following Fred Moten, Tiffany Lethabo King, and others, is the “method” of that unbecoming. This paraontological, black, unbecoming is also a remaking otherwise, and is thus abolitionist, making the claim that a radical alterity from the strictures of racial identity is necessary, possible, and desirable.
Beyond Distinctions: A Treatise on Abolition and Accomplice Work
Andrew Cutrone is a PhD Candidate in Sociology and a Graduate Affiliate of the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas, Austin. He writes about and studies Black social theory and abolition politics. His research examines, but ultimately seeks to dispense with, the regime of the normative subject, preferring, instead, to induce and honor instances of fugitive coalition. Specifically, Andrew reads a range of archival materials to theorize the radicality underpinning the relationship between fugitive enslaved people and those who aided in their escape.
Andrew Cutrone; Beyond Distinctions: A Treatise on Abolition and Accomplice Work. South Atlantic Quarterly 1 July 2023; 122 (3): 635–642. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-10644090
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