Soul Talk and Abolishing Oppressive Institutions

• In Event: Orienting to Others

Abstract

There is a mainstream discussion now around the abolition of the police and all carceral institutions. In order to truly abolish oppressive, racist institutions, the individuals who make up these institutions must be willing to engage with the practice of sacrifice and commit to re-shaping their entire view of the world. How does this happen? How can those who are political members of oppressive institutions ensure that they can take on the fear, resentment and violence from those who wish to maintain such systems in order to push beyond? Even if abolition were to occur, how can they ensure not simply replacing one oppressive institution with another? Alice Walker, James Baldwin and Stanley Cavell, each share similar language and understandings of human relationships that may be helpful in addressing such questions. Through a reading of Walker’s In The Closet of the Soul, Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work, and passages from Cavell’s The Claim of Reason, I will show how they all use the language of the soul in ways that highlight how human relations to each other and ourselves become warped and twisted under racist systems. To develop the capacity to acknowledge the harm caused to others and ourselves and to then fight to heal that harm, requires almost what constitutes a conversion. A conversion that would now give me the strength to no longer deny what has been right in front of me, and to finally fight those who would uphold an oppressive system. As a society, our progression towards an anti-racist society has been marked by regress as often as it has been marked by progress. When people have been properly converted to the anti-racist cause, they fight. They fight in a way that causes them to lose friends and family, challenge co-workers, sacrifice privileges, wealth and even bodily safety. This is what is at the heart of Walker, Bladwin and Cavell’s soul talk. They are all asking, ‘What would it take to make you a ‘true believer’?

Author

• Felicity Stone-Richards, University of California, Santa Barbara