On Withdrawal (into Darkness): George Jackson and the Imperative to Abandon Reformism

In the wake of George Jackson’s critique of reformism as aiding fascism, abolitionists continue to prescribe non-reformist reforms as a viable approach to dismantling carceral structures. I argue that abolition’s attachment to reforms is evidence of an affirmationist drive to insist that the state is not fully overdetermined by an antagonistic oppressive contract. For Jackson, the state is directed by an unrelenting enemy determined to violently maintain the abjection of black people and thus cannot be reconfigured to enable the flourishing of black life. I conceptualize “dark abolition” as an onto-epistemological reorientation to politics in light of Jackson’s assessments that involves an acceptance of black existence as ontologically captive and an embrace of the imperative to destroy the oppressive contract. Jackson strives to generalize this dark acceptance by closing off all non-conflictual outlets, forcefully inviting the black populace to abandon reformism and embrace conflictual struggle as a mode of care.