Joy James and RAW book launch for In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities
We are thrilled to welcome BLACK LIBERATION POLITICAL VISIONARY AND THEORIST JOY JAMES to celebrate the launch of her new book, in conversation with RAW!
Mumia Abu-Jamal writes, “Joy James’s Revolutionary Love is umph-degree love; or love beyond measure. It is anything love. It is love without reckoning. It is love that dares all things, beyond which others may find the spirit-force to survive; to live to fight another day. Such love is also fighting itself, for the sake of ensuring that others may live.”
Violence is arrayed against me because I’m Black, or female, or queer, or undocumented. There is no rescue team coming for us. With that knowledge, we need a different operational base to recreate the world. It is not going to be a celebrity savior. Never was, never will be. If you’re in a religious tradition that is millennia-old, consider how the last savior went out. It was always going to be bloody. It was always going to be traumatic. But there’s a beauty to facing the reality of our lives. Not our lives as they’re broken apart, written about and then sold back to us in academic or celebrity discourse. But our lives as we understand them. The most important thing is showing up. Showing up and learning how to live by and with others, learning how to reinvent ourselves in this increasing wasteland. That’s the good life. (Foreword by Da'Shaun L. Harrison and Afterword by Mumia Abu-Jamal)
The political theorist Joy James teaches at Williams College, Williamstown, MA.
Editor of The Angela Y. Davis Reader, Imprisoned Intellectuals, The New Abolitionists and Warfare in the American Homeland. James is also author of Resisting State Violence, Transcending the Talented Tenth, Seeking the Beloved Community, and New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the Afterlife of Erica Garner (Common Notions, 2023).
Rebecca A. Wilcox (RAW) is a fourth year doctoral student at Princeton Theological Seminary concentrating in Religion and Society.
Her research engages Black religion, Hauntology, and Critical Black Studies to explore anti-black antagonisms in underground economies. Wilcox received her Masters of Theological Studies from Vanderbilt University, and a BA in Religion with a minor in Philosophy from Clark Atlanta University. Wilcox’s most recent publication is titled, “Distorted Mirrors: Toward a Clear Gaze on Black Suffering”, published by “The Immanent Frame.”
Get a taste of the discussion with Joy James and K. Kim Holder on Millenials Are Killing Capitalism
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