Policing Difference, Feminist Oblivions and the (Im-) Possibilities of Intersectional Abolition

Intensive policing and the expansion of the carceral condition are some of the most flagrant expressions of the current phase of gendered racial capitalism. Through the regulation and illegalization of migration, anti-terror legislation, the punishment of poverty and the war on crime, black and other negatively racialized subjects and groups are particularly vulnerable to state sanctioned forms of premature death across the Global North and South. In many contexts of continental Europe, mobilizations against racist policing (racial profiling) lead by human rights and community organizations and initiatives have addressed this condition in the recent years. What often remains at the margins, however, are the intersectional modalities and dimensions of racist policing and punishment. Likewise, the issue of racist policing and the expansion of the punitive condition is seldomly discussed within European gender studies and broader feminist movements in continental Europe. As the title suggests, this article challenges one-dimensional readings of racist policing and engages with the silences around intersectional modalities of police violence. It further addresses the reproduction of carceral feminisms within gender studies and feminist approaches in continental Europe. Departing from current debates and my scholar activist work on racial profiling in the contexts of continental Europe (mainly Germany, Switzerland and France) and by applying a black feminist framework, I interrogate modalities of intersectional structural, slow and silent violence engendered by policing. In a second step, I discuss the implications of carceral feminisms and problematize the broad silences within gender studies and feminist movements around intersectional modalities of police violence. Finally, possibilities and horizons of intersectional abolition are sketched out.