No Justice, No Peace

Black Radicalism and the Atmospheres of the Internal Colony

Bibliographic Data

ID2353177
AuthorsIllan Rua Wall (0000-0002-6095-7571, University of Warwick, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume40
Issue7-8
Pages103-118
Publication date2023-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheory Culture & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-2764 • E-ISSN: 1460-3616
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/02632764221106392
OpenAlexW4293215925
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited26

Instead of thinking of 'public order' as the type of power that police deploy to manage disorder, this article suggests that we understand it as a set of background affects. The problem of analysing these affects is that (aside from moments of unrest) the majority of the populace is anaesthetised to them. Most people take the public feelings of calm predictability for granted. Crucially, however, the everyday management of public order does not anaesthetise everyone. It also produces 'suspect populations', who must remain attentive to its low background hum. This article focuses on the US 'colony within' literature, developed by civil rights and black nationalist traditions from the late 1960s. The article suggests that this internal colony analysis contains a nuanced exploration of the spatialised affects of public order; the clouds of suspicion; the atmospheres of tension; and the police encounters that generate an affective substrate of relations

Economic Justice · Ideology · Injustice · Nationalism · Political radicalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Suspect · Unrest · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Music History and Culture · Race, History, and American Society