The Downward Redistribution of Breath: Abolitionist Visions of Healing Justice from Chicago

Abstract

A new generation of visionary artists, activists, and healers from queer and trans Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour communities offer a crucial wellspring for insurgent ideas about breathing, healing, and justice that contrast the dominant militarized policing order in the United States. At a time when the proliferating calamities of global fascism, climate chaos, and endless warfare appear ascendant across the planet, how do minoritarian cultural workers living and labouring in the heart of empire make sense of this dying world order while breathing life into new worlds through their creative practices? The ecology of minoritarian aesthetics emerging from recent overlapping protest movements in Chicago are working to turn the tide against prisons, policing, and American warfare. They offer a powerful roadmap for indexing the dystopian here and now of US imperial decline and imagining rebellious futures that can move us from despair and isolation to coalition and transformation.