Contemporary Political Theory Annual Prize 2024 (Volume 22)
We are delighted to announce that the Contemporary Political Theory Annual Prize has been awarded to Ali Aslam for the article “The Politics of Repair” in Volume 22, Issue 1 (2023), pp. 3-23.
Ali Aslam is Assistant Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College. He is author of Ordinary Democracy (2018), and is writing a book on democratic repair.
The judges’ citation was as follows:
Ali Aslam’s insightful article explores a praxis of repair which is central to the work of abolitionist activists. His examination is distinctive as it presents the notion of reparation as a ‘praxis’ that includes what activists do through practices of self-care and caring for those who have suffered under unfair systems of power in order to heal and make people ready for radical change. Activists engage in a praxis of repair when they use ethical practices of care – what Aslam calls healing justice – to address harms to individuals while also engaging in direct action and establishing alternatives to the criminal justice system. Healing justice, direct action and creative alternative systems are central features of abolitionist organizing, according to Aslam, which together establish the conditions by which people can experience ‘freedom’. The central aim of the article is to explore the connections between abolition-democracy, a praxis of repair, and healing justice.
Drawing from the theory and practice of abolitionist politics, Aslam highlights the emergence of practices that ‘make ready’ people, norms and institutions for the change required to address the trauma and the stress of living under a racially unjust state. ‘Making ready’ refers to healing injuries and establishing the preconditions for people to engage in direct action against that state and its institutions. Aslam argues that a political and politicized understanding of repair is a central, not incidental, feature of the organizing efforts of abolitionist movements.
The paper offers an impressively nuanced analysis of abolition-politics, in theory and practice, which is sensitive to the experiential diversity and contradictory settings in which abolitionist organizations exist. The argument is situated in the context of the ‘false promise of democracy’ in contemporary America where systems of racial domination and white supremacy coexist alongside legal and constitutional guarantees of individual liberty and equality. Within this context, abolition-democracy is a project of institutional and self-transformation that seeks to reassess and creatively reinvent institutions and practices including, but not restricted to, those associated with incarceration and policing. ‘Making ready’ is directed at transformation through direct action. But it is also committed to individual and collective survival and to helping people respond to the stress and trauma of racial oppression. The concept of ‘making ready’ encapsulates strategies by which people and existing institutions can be ready for revolutionary change.
This article is methodologically ambitious. In a seamless and compelling manner, Aslam brings contemporary political theory into dialogue with the lived experiences of abolitionist activists and organizations. The article examines the complexity of negotiating lived experience while organizing direct action campaigns. Many practices of abolitionist organizing aim at a mix of direct action and survival. Activists must know and engage with oppressive institutions, such as bail systems, to ‘make ready’ those who must interact with these systems. Care and mutual support are practices of transformative change in these contexts which contribute to innovative legal reform that could potentially advance the ends of prison abolition.
Aslam makes a major contribution to political theory in exposing how a limited understanding of the concept of politics crowds out healing justice and thereby offers a distorted picture of what abolitionist politics entails. One of Aslam’s main findings is that practices that make ready through healing those who have experienced trauma, and those who engage in direct action to create the type of world we want to live in, are mutually interdependent and best understood as related to each other. But from the vantage of political theory, often only part of this work is viewed as political, even within leading contemporary political theories of racial injustice. One of the chief aims of the paper is to push the boundaries of how politics is understood to include spaces where repair and transformation happen. Amongst Aslam’s important contributions is to show that where trauma, stress and survival are well-acknowledged features of oppression, practices of healing and care are integral to the aim of ‘making ready’ and central to the situated knowledge and practices of abolitionist activists. But Aslam goes further to establish that actively building supportive and caring practices as an alternative to racially oppressive ones is political work which is central to ‘making ready’, to direct action, and to abolitionist organizing.
Members of the judging panel were Dr Manjeet Ramgotra, SOAS University of London, UK; Professor Jessica Whyte, University of New South Wales, Australia; with Professor Avigail Eisenberg, University of Victoria, Canda, as chair.
Previous Prize Winning Papers
2023 Prize Winner (Volume 21)
Didier Zúñiga for his article “Ecologizing democratic theory: Agency, representation, animacy” in Volume 21, Issue 2 (2022), pp. 198-218.
2022 Prize Winner (Volume 20)
Awarded to Sharon Stanley for her article “The Persistence of Myth: Brazil's undead ‘racial democracy’”, in Contemporary Political Theory, Volume 20, Number 4 (2021), pp. 749-770.
2021 Prize Winner (Volume 19)
Awarded to Lorna Bracewell for her article “Sex wars, SlutWalks, and carceral feminism,” in Contemporary Political Theory, Volume 19, Number 1 (2020), pp. 61-82.
2020 Prize Winner (Volume 18)
Awarded to Lida Maxwell for her article “The politics and gender of truth-telling in Foucault’s lectures on parrhesia,” in Contemporary Political Theory, Volume 18, Number 1 (2019), pp. 22-42.
2019 Prize Winner (Volume 17)
Awarded to Mauro J. Caraccioli for his article “A Problem from Hell: Natural History, Empire, and the Devil in the New World,” in Contemporary Political Theory, Volume 17, Number 4 (2018), pp. 437-458.
2018 Prize Winner (Volume 16)
Awarded to Mario Feit, Associate Professor of Political Theory at Georgia State University, for their article, ‘Democratic Impatience: Martin Luther King, Jr on Democratic Temporality,’ in Contemporary Political Theory, Volume 16, Number 3 (2017), pp. 363-386.
2017 Prize Winner (Volume 15)
Awarded to David Schlosberg, Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, and Romand Coles, Research Professor at the Institute for Social Justice, Australian Catholic University, for their article “The new environmentalism of everyday life: Sustainability, material flows, and movements,” in Contemporary Political Theory, Volume 15, Number 2 (2016), pp. 160–181. This paper is published Open Access.
2016 Prize Winner (Volume 14)
Awarded to Giunia Gatta, Adjunct Professor of Social and Political Sciences at Bocconi University, for her article 'Suffering and the making of politics: Perspectives from Jaspers and Camus'
Contemporary Political Theory, Volume 14, Number 4 (2015), pp. 335–354. This paper is free to access.
2015 Prize Winner (Volume 13)
Awarded to Lori Marso, Professor of Political Science at Union College, for her article 'Solidarity sans identity: Richard Wright and Simone de Beauvoir theorize political subjectivity', in Contemporary Political Theory, Volume 13, Number 3 (2014), pp. 242-262.
2014 Prize Winner (Volume 12)
Awarded to Marina Prentoulis, Senior Lecturer in Media and Politics at the University of East Anglia, and Lasse Thomassen, Reader of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London, for their article ‘Political theory in the square: Protest, representation and subjectification’, Contemporary Political Theory, Volume 12, Number 3 (2013), pp. 166–84.
2013 Prize Winner (Volume 11)
Awarded to Diana Coole, Professor of Political and Social Theory at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, for her article ‘Reconstructing the elderly: A critical analysis of pensions and population policies in an era of demographic ageing’, Contemporary Political Theory, Volume 11, Number 1 (February 2012), pp. 41-67.
2012 Prize Winner (Volume 10)
Awarded to Andrew J. Douglas, Assistant Professor at Morehouse College, for his article ‘In a milieu of scarcity: Sartre and the limits of political imagination’, Contemporary Political Theory, Volume 10, Number 3 (August 2011), pp. 354–371.
2011 Prize Winner (Volume 9)
Awarded to Sara Rushing, Associate Professor of Political Science At Montana State University, for her article 'Preparing for politics: Judith Butler's ethical dispositions', Contemporary Political Theory, Volume 9, Number 3 (August 2010) pp 284-303.
2010 Prize Winner (Volume 8)
Awarded to Jason Ferrell, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Concordia University, for his article 'Isaiah Berlin: Liberalism and pluralism in theory and practice', Contemporary Political Theory, Volume 8, Issue 3 (August 2009) pp 295-316.
