Active Intolerance : Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition

This book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays on Le Groupe d'information sur les prisons (The Prisons Information Group, or GIP). The GIP was a radical activist group, extant between 1970 and 1973, in which Michel Foucault was heavily involved. It aimed to facilitate the circulation of information about living conditions in French prisons and, over time, it catalyzed several revolts and instigated minor reforms. In Foucault's words, the GIP sought to identify what was 'intolerable' about the prison system and then to produce 'an active intolerance' of that same intolerable reality. To do this, the GIP 'gave prisoners the floor,' so as to hear from them about what to resist and how. The essays collected here explore the GIP's resources both for Foucault studies and for prison activism today. Front Matter....Pages i-xviii Active Intolerance: An Introduction....Pages 1-19 Front Matter....Pages 21-21 The Abolition of Philosophy....Pages 23-40 The Untimely Speech of the GIP Counter-Archive....Pages 41-58 Conduct and Power: Foucault’s Methodological Expansions in 1971....Pages 59-74 Work and Failure: Assessing the Prisons Information Group....Pages 75-91 Intolerable 1....Pages 92-92 Front Matter....Pages 93-93 Breaking the Conditioning: The Relevance of the Prisons Information Group....Pages 95-104 Between Discipline and Caregiving: Changing Prison Population Demographics and Possibilities for Self-Transformation....Pages 105-121 Unruliness without Rioting: Hunger Strikes in Contemporary Politics....Pages 123-140 Intolerable 2....Pages 141-141 Front Matter....Pages 143-143 Disrupted Foucault: Los Angeles’ Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA) and the Obsolescence of White Academic Raciality....Pages 145-168 Investigations from Marx to Foucault....Pages 169-185 The GIP as a Neoliberal Intervention: Trafficking in Illegible Concepts....Pages 187-201 The Disordering of Discourse: Voice and Authority in the GIP....Pages 203-221 Intolerable 3....Pages 222-222 Front Matter....Pages 223-223 Beyond Guilt and Innocence: The Creaturely Politics of Prisoner Resistance Movements....Pages 225-240 Resisting “Massive Elimination”: Foucault, Immigration, and the GIP....Pages 241-257 “Can They Ever Escape?” Foucault, Black Feminism, and the Intimacy of Abolition....Pages 259-276 Back Matter....Pages 277-297 Formed in the wake of May 1968, the Prisons Information Group (GIP) was a radical resistance movement active in France in the early 1970's. Theorist Michel Foucault was heavily involved. This book collects interdisciplinary essays that explore the GIP's resources both for Foucault studies and for prison activism today This book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays on Le Groupe d'information sur les prisons (The Prisons Information Group, the GIP). The GIP was a radical activist group, extant between 1970 and 1973, in which Michel Foucault was heavily involved