Three Forms of Poetic Exaltation

This essay is a study of black poesis in the critical and theoretical project of George Jackson and its attempt to differentiate itself from carcerality (at the level of word, concept, and genre). In the process, Jackson’s radical attempt to undo, disrupt, and displace all forms of fascist authority (even his own) offers an unparalleled challenge to how blackness is oppressed and how it often oppresses itself, in not only law and politics but also language and rhetoric. Accordingly, this essay recasts Jackson’s relation to European philosophy—Jean Genet, Gilles Deleuze—and to the black radical tradition.