How to Lose the Hounds
Maroon Geographies and a World Beyond Policing
Published on 13. October 2023
Book
Hardback
192 pages
978-1-4780-2050-9 (ISBN)
Description
In How to Lose the Hounds Celeste Winston explores marronage-the practice of flight from and placemaking beyond slavery-as a guide to police abolition. She examines historically Black maroon communities in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, that have been subjected to violent excesses of police power from slavery until the present day. Tracing the long and ongoing historical geography of Black freedom struggles in the face of anti-Black police violence in these communities, Winston shows how marronage provides critical lessons for reimagining public safety and community well-being. These freedom struggles take place in what Winston calls maroon geographies-sites of flight from slavery and the spaces of freedom produced in multigenerational Black communities. Maroon geographies constitute part of a Black placemaking tradition that asserts life-affirming forms of community. Winston contends that maroon geographies operate as a central method of Black flight, holding ground, and constructing places of freedom in ways that imagine and plan a world beyond policing.
Reviews / Votes
"Through Celeste Winston's examination of early Black communities from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as her study of late modern Black communities in the twentieth century, we learn vital lessons about the value of marronage for our understandings of slavery, resistance, liberation, freedom, race, capitalism, and geography. Imagining Black futures beyond slavery and a world without the police, Winston offers a wonderful treatise that will reverberate throughout geography, Black studies, American studies, history, political theory, and decolonial politics. How to Lose the Hounds is an absolutely marvelous book and a magnificent achievement!" - Neil Roberts, author of (Freedom as Marronage) "With its rich account of marronage in Montgomery County, Maryland, and beyond, Celeste Winston's How to Lose the Hounds is a brilliant addition to the study of black flight, geographic transformations, and abolition. How to Lose the Hounds both succeeds as a rigorous study of maroon geographies, maroon justice and other maroon tactics and, importantly, insists that a careful understanding of 'radical Black praxis of community' is essential to the work toward police abolition." - Simone Browne, author of (Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness)More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
North Carolina
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
19 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
431 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4780-2050-9 (9781478020509)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Celeste Winston is Assistant Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University.
Content
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue xiii
Introduction 1
1. Maroon Folklore as an Abolition Technology 21
2. The Fugitive Infrastructure of Maroon Geographies 37
3. Maroon Justice 65
4. Community beyond Policing 87
5. Maroon Geographies and the Paradox of Abolition Policy 109
Epilogue: Abolition Future Folklore 129
Notes 133
References 139
Index 159
Prologue xiii
Introduction 1
1. Maroon Folklore as an Abolition Technology 21
2. The Fugitive Infrastructure of Maroon Geographies 37
3. Maroon Justice 65
4. Community beyond Policing 87
5. Maroon Geographies and the Paradox of Abolition Policy 109
Epilogue: Abolition Future Folklore 129
Notes 133
References 139
Index 159