Thesis Advisor: Amithab Rai

Thesis: An Abolitionist Dance in Ruins

August 2022

Abstract

Gloria Anzaldúa's notion facultad (faculty) is a perceptive capacity which oscillates closely with intuition and empathy. This “instant sensing” is more likely to be developed by “those who do not feel psychologically or physically safe in this world.” I optimistically postulate that such awareness could be cultivated by way of “deep listening,” and other similar practices in order to bridge the violent divide between those who labor and those whose comfort is maintained by the labor of others. I aim to show how these faculties could be learned by those privileged enough to have comfortably operated thus far without having had to develop them. If these capacities were available in the quotidian lives of the few who are not marginalized, as well as the technologies which have become inseparable to our lives, I believe it would invoke a paradigm shift. It would turn transparent the notion that inequality is everyone’s problem, that it is killing every one of us. So, as I dive into those who have spoken of this sense before me, why am I preoccupied with computation, financialization, privatization and the violence of borders both physical and figural? I am incapable of disentangling their impact on one another. I attempt to tease out the unsustainable methodologies shared between them. I’d like to posit transdisciplinarity as a push away from compartmentalization and specialization exacerbated by capitalism. My research poses a rewiring of non-holistic modes of operation.

Author Hannah Jones