Angela Davis and the Contributions and Contradictions of Abolition

This historical narrative outlines the development of not only Critical Resistance as a political movement, but also of Angela Davis as a scholarly activist who became an architect of contemporary abolition. This chapter offers a critique of Davis – noting the relative success of her campaigning and academic endeavours in the university and beyond, while not ignoring shortcomings and omissions embedded in contemporary abolition often led by academics and non-profits. This chapter charts a period which, as well as making enormous advances in progressivism, also created divisions and promoted well-funded narratives without publicly addressing contradictions that curtailed radical and diverse visions of abolition. The ideological diversity of the abolitionist movement reminds us of the necessity to work to address issues of class, ideology, funders’ influence, and political alignments that can divide or undermine and marginalize the critiques, analyses and narratives of non-elites and radicals who lack high profiles and popularity supported by liberal concepts. Participating in the wider fight for freedom from oppression remains a zone of contradictions as well as conflict and antagonism.