Abolitionist Speculation

Building upon the work of prison abolitionists, the author theorizes the speculative dimension of abolition by developing a concept of abolitionist speculation, which refers to the practice of imagining a world without prisons and the conditions that would make such a world possible. This article locates this concept in the history of utopian literature, and reads a tradition of prison abolition out of utopianism. At the same time, it sketches a tradition of utopianism within prison abolition, and weaves together histories of anarchist and communist politics. The article concludes with a reading of Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1974 novel, The Dispossessed, in order to flesh out this concept in greater detail.