A review by axmed
Contextualizing Angela Davis: The Agency and Identity of an Icon by Joy James

informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

such an important work and very accessible language. i finished it within 24hs.

5 out of 5 for sure! will share some passages at a later moment.

my 1 critique is that i wish she wouldn't use the word 'terrorist' to describe the white supremacist violence or state violence. to quote Palestinian performance artist:

"Terrorism does only what it was designed to do only to those it was designed to target. Terrorism cannot be recuperated. We cannot use or weaponize it for our own purposes. It means nothing to call Israeli or American violence terrorist violence, because terrorism is a one-sided weapon and its bullets belong to the state. The state cannot appear in the scope. In trying to prove that we are not terrorists, or prove that someone else is a terrorist, we reify that the weapon of terrorism ought to exist at all, and that the problem is simply giving it the right target. We reload the weapon ourselves when we do this."

source: https://proteanmag.com/2023/12/08/notes-on-craft-writing-in-the-hour-of-genocide/