The Punishment Monopoly: Tales of My Ancestors, Dispossession, and the Building of the United States

Abstract

This review engages with Pem Davidson Buck’s The Punishment Monopoly: Tales of My Ancestors, Dispossession, and the Building of the United States. We position the book in relation to the political-cultural context of the United States, and outline and describe the general arguments and contours of the text. We then think with and in relation to Buck’s arguments in order to suggest the need for a politics of possibility—of exposing, defending, and advancing a pluriverse of worlds—to join with a politics of oppositional, power-building solidarity.

Key Words:

• Dispossession
• Whiteness
• State

Notes

1 See McKittrick (2015) for a deep and expansive engagement with Sylvia Wynter’s work.