Racism, Resistance and Social Change Black Socialities

The book explores black urban resistance against racist imagery, policing, and housing insecurity in the Parisian region. Based on ethnographic research and qualitative interviews, this study explores the formation of abolitionist spatial resistance, mutli-racial solidarity and the possibilities of political blackness. In Black socialities: Urban resistance and the struggle beyond recognition in Paris, Vanessa E. Thompson shows how black urban movements from the racialized working-class districts of Paris develop collective place-making strategies in their anti-racist mobilizations, beyond calls for recognition or collective identity formation. From the disruption of racist and carceral geographies by claiming and appropriating public and semi-public spaces, to creating and supporting self-made infrastructures of evicted families, and organizing multi-racial resistance against policing: These modalities of collective action unfold as socialities and shape anti-racist organizing against state racism, policing, and structural abandonment. They further open the horizon for new formations of political blackness and abolitionist politics, beyond Paris and beyond Europe.‘Vanessa E. Thompson’s beautiful text shows how Black Studies, feminist studies, and Marxism interactively strengthen our ability to notice and analyze dynamics that might otherwise remain obscure. Her lively concept “Black socialities” is materially grounded and symbolically stunning. This is a magnificent work of abolition geography.’– Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Graduate Center, City University of New York‘With this book, Vanessa E. Thompson offers an English-speaking audience a way to think about anti-racist struggles in France by linking material demands, symbolic struggles, and their spatial grounding in working-class neighborhoods. A very important intervention that moves beyond U.S.-centered frameworks.’– Joao Gabriel, historian and author This book shows how black urban movements from the racialized working-class districts of Paris develop collective place-making strategies in their anti-racist mobilizations, beyond calls for recognition or collective identity formation. These modalities of collective action - from the disruption of racist and carceral geographies through the appropriation of public and semi-public space, the creation of self-made infrastructures for evicted families, to the organization of multi-racial resistance to policing - unfold as socialities that shape anti-racist organizing against state racism, policing, and structural abandonment. They open the horizon for new formations of political blackness and abolitionist politics, beyond Paris and beyond Europe.