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Carceral Capitalism
Semiotext(e) Intervention series 21

In this collection of essays in Semiotext(e)'s Intervention series, Jackie Wang examines the contemporary incarceration techniques that have emerged since the 1990s. The essays illustrate various aspects of the carceral continuum, including the biopolitics of juvenile delinquency, predatory policing, the political economy of fees and fines, cybernetic governance, and algorithmic policing. Included in this volume is Wang's influential critique of liberal anti-racist politics, “Against Innocence,” as well as essays on RoboCop, techno-policing, and the aesthetic problem of making invisible forms of power legible.

Wang shows that the new racial capitalism begins with parasitic governance and predatory lending that extends credit only to dispossess later. Predatory lending has a decidedly spatial character and exists in many forms, including subprime mortgage loans, student loans for sham for-profit colleges, car loans, rent-to-own scams, payday loans, and bail bond loans. Parasitic governance, Wang argues, operates through five primary techniques: financial states of exception, automation, extraction and looting, confinement, and gratuitous violence. While these techniques of governance often involve physical confinement and the state-sanctioned execution of black Americans, new carceral modes have blurred the distinction between the inside and outside of prison. As technologies of control are perfected, carcerality tends to bleed into society.


Celebration of Awareness
A Call For Institutional Revolution

As a formidable critic of some of society's most cherished institutions, such as compulsory education and organised religion, Ivan Illich has attracted world attention. His commitment to a radical humanism against conventional institutions and esatablished ideas of social virtue make for compelling, and convincing, reading. This book brings together for the first time many of his lectures and articles bearing out Illich's invigorating challanges to the status quo.



City of Thorns
Nine lives in the world's largest refugee camp

To the charity workers, Dadaab refugee camp is a humanitarian crisis; to the Kenyan government, it is a 'nursery for terrorists'; to the western media, it is a dangerous no-go area; but to its half a million residents, it is their last resort.

Situated hundreds of miles from any other settlement, deep within the inhospitable desert of northern Kenya where only thorn bushes grow, Dadaab is a city like no other. Its buildings are made from mud, sticks or plastic, its entire economy is grey, and its citizens survive on rations and luck. Over the course of four years, Ben Rawlence became a first-hand witness to a strange and desperate limbo-land, getting to know many of those who have come there seeking sanctuary. Among them are Guled, a former child soldier who lives for football; Nisho, who scrapes an existence by pushing a wheelbarrow and dreaming of riches; Tawane, the indomitable youth leader; and schoolgirl Kheyro, whose future hangs upon her education.

In City of Thorns, Rawlence interweaves the stories of nine individuals to show what life is like in the camp and to sketch the wider political forces that keep the refugees trapped there. Lucid, vivid and illuminating, here is an urgent human story with deep international repercussions, brought to life through the people who call Dadaab home.

 


Come Alive! The Spirited Art Of Sister Corita

Admired by Charles and Ray Eames, Buckminster Fuller and Saul Bass, Sister Corita Kent (1918–1986) was one of the most innovative and unusual pop artists of the 1960s, battling the political and religious establishments, revolutionizing graphic design and encouraging the creativity of thousands of people – all while living and practising as a Catholic nun in California. Mixing advertising slogans and poetry in her prints and commandeering nuns and students to help make ambitious installations, processions and banners, Sister Corita's work is now recognized as some of the most striking – and joyful – American art of the 60s. But, at the end of the decade and at the height of her fame and prodigious work rate, she left the convent where she had spent her adult life. Julie Ault's book is the first to examine Corita's life and career, containing more than 90 illustrations, many reproduced for the first time, capturing the artist's use of vibrant and day-glo colours.


Conserve and Control

Conserve and Control is written from the margins. Characters who are non-binary, working class, disabled and trans take central place as we are transported to a queer and green paradise that, like all utopias, is not to be trusted.
As a working-class activist and (former) s3x worker, Otter Lieffe brings nuance to the ethics of work, kink, sex and activism. In this, her second novel, she explores what it might mean to really create political change and asks who gets left behind in the process. She invites us to step up and take our place in the struggle and bring our fabulous complexity with us to the front-lines.


Cosy Classics: Oliver Twist

Cuddle up with a classic! In twelve needle-felted scenes and twelve child-friendly words, each book in this ingenious series captures the essence of a literary masterpiece. Simple words and a beloved story make this ebook the perfect vehicle for early learning with an erudite twist. Budding bookworms will delight in this clever retelling of the classics made just for them!

In Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, an orphan boy on the streets of London falls in with a bad crowd of pickpockets and thieves. Will Oliver ever find his family? It's a first words primer for your literary little one!

The Cozy Classics series is the brainchild of two brothers, both dads, who were thinking of ways to teach words to their very young children. They hit upon the classics as the basis for their infant primers, and the rest, as they say, is history. From Moby Dick to Pride and Prejudice, here are The Great Books of Western Literature for toddlers and their parents in ebook form—a little bit serious, a little bit ironic, entirely funny and clever, and always a welcome read.


Counting Up the Olive Tree
A Palestine Number Book

After the extraordinary success of P is for Palestine: A Palestine Alphabet Book, Golbarg Bashi teamed up with the gifted artist Nabi H. Ali to publish the second book in the Dr. Bashi Diverse Books Series, namely 'Counting Up the Olive Tree: A Palestine Number Book' — a rhythmic, earth-friendly adventure where little Palestinian football (soccer) players, boys and girls, try to save an olive tree — helping young readers practice counting the numbers!

A new fully illustrated counting 123 book about Palestine, from the author and publisher of the critically-acclaimed P is for Palestine: A Palestine Alphabet Book a bold diverse children's book successfully crowd-fundraised on Launchgood.com!

Counting Up The Olive Tree: A Palestine Number Book is a social justice homage to Bill Martin Jr. and his Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. A legendary classic children’s book we love.


Create Dangerously
The Immigrant Artist at Work

In this deeply personal book, the celebrated Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and exile, examining what it means to be an immigrant artist from a country in crisis. Inspired by Albert Camus' lecture, "Create Dangerously," and combining memoir and essay, Danticat tells the stories of artists, including herself, who create despite, or because of, the horrors that drove them from their homelands and that continue to haunt them. Create Dangerously is an eloquent and moving expression of Danticat's belief that immigrant artists are obliged to bear witness when their countries of origin are suffering from violence, oppression, poverty, and tragedy.


Crime, Class & Corruption
The politics of the police

A mass movement has swept across the globe. It has sparked new debates and questions about imperialism in the 21st century. Anti-Imperialism brings together some of the leading activists and writers in the anti-war movement to look at the issues, main players and regions most affected by imperialism past and present. This handbook is essential for activists everywhere. Contributors include Tariq Ali, George Monbiot, Tony Benn, Louise Christian and many others.