Abolition as Spiritual Discipline

Abstract

This paper explores abolition as a spiritual discipline, considering the possibilities of turning a political commitment into a ritual, daily practice that becomes an ethic. Incarcerated people have always documented their experience through writing and storytelling, and in recent decades, scholars have turned to anthologizing their words. Few analyses focus on prison writing influences abolition, and even fewer highlight the spiritual dimensions that connect incarcerated individuals to a larger movement. This work uses writing from incarcerated people to demonstrate the power of spiritual discipline to combat the power of discipline by the state.