Listen "Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s “Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation”"
Episode Synopsis
For Independence Day, we dive into the archives to bring you an episode that still feels timely. Ruth Wilson Gilmore joins Kate Wolf and Eric Newman to talk about her collection, "Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation," which covers three decades of her thinking about abolition, activism, scholarship, the carceral system, the political economy of racism, and much more. For Gilmore, these are not siloed issues; rather, they are braided effects of an unjust political, economic, and cultural system that must be dismantled in order for liberation to take place. Gilmore reminds us that we must look for connections beyond the academy, where theory meets praxis, where the vulnerable are not an abstraction but a concrete human reality. Her thought and work are a much needed shot in the arm for a political and intellectual culture that has, in the view of many, atrophied or been co-opted by the extractive loops of late capitalism.
More episodes of the podcast LA Review of Books
Mosab Abu Toha's "Forest of Noise"
29/08/2025
Michael Clune's "Pan"
01/08/2025
LARB Book Club: Sebastian Castillo
25/07/2025
Catherine Lacy's "The Möbius Book"
18/07/2025