Insurgent Pathways

Abstract This article unpacks the material publication process of George Jackson's Soledad Brother. While much has been written on the enduring political and intellectual significance of this work, cultural materialist analysis can unpack how this book reached publication and why its material channels of communication are important for spatial thinking on prisons. The social networks, clandestine maneuvers, and legal loopholes that led to the book's publication all signal how the prison bears creative insurgent pathways within its architecture of racist incapacitation. Jackson's publication process highlights the disordering ruptures, incorrigibility, and out-of-sync moments that people incarcerated produce under the constraints of carceral control. Cultural materialist analysis of Soledad Brother not only is instructive for comprehending the politics, culture, and geography of California prisons in the early 1970s but also illuminates the everyday Black radical pulse of carceral resistance that produces space under some of the harshest conditions of carceral duress. The article ends by highlighting Jackson's continued influence in shaping prison resistance movements, at large and small scales.