In a new place, the first thing I read is the animals. How the birds answer me tells me how the people there have treated them. In Virginia, and most of the country, crows are wary and keep their distance — they have been hunted as pests for generations. In Seattle, where people leave them alone, they play: in the wind, in the dumpsters, with each other. The first time I looked one of those Seattle crows in the eye, it held my gaze, unafraid. Something in me let go that I had not known I was holding — the part that stays careful around a wild animal, so I do not stir the fear it has learned to expect. Because people there had shown these crows plain decency for generations, I got a chance I had never had: to just be with a half-wild bird, both of us at ease, sharing a minute. No big deal. Two creatures, side by side. And hard to imagine — until it actually happens.
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In a new place, the first thing I read is the animals. The way the birds answer me tells me how the people there have treated them. In Virginia, and most of the country, the crows are aloof, evasive, gone before you finish looking — hunted as pests for generations. In Seattle, where they are left in peace, they play: in the wind, in the dumpsters, with each other. The first time I met the eye of one of those Seattle crows, it held my gaze, unafraid. Something in me let go that I had not known I was gripping — the part that holds itself back around any wild thing, to spare it the fear it has learned to expect. Generations of ordinary decency toward these crows had given me a chance I had never had: to simply be with a half-wild bird, each of us easy in our own skin, sharing a minute. No big deal. Two creatures, coexisting. And beyond imagining — until it actually happens.
The colony in the mind. The shrug in the meeting room. The body the law does not see. All of these sit on top of one thing that came first. A framework decides which experiences count. It decides this before anyone makes a real choice. The ones it does not count fall through. The outside. The colony. The framework. These are three layers of one question. Why is the system the way it is. This is the third layer down.
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The colony in the mind, the shrug in the meeting room, the body that has no legal recognition — all of it rests on something prior: a framework that decides, before any specific decision is made, which experiences count and which fall through.
The outside. The colony. The framework. Three depths of the same question — why is the system the way it is. This is the third descent.
In 1976, a group of Black women sued General Motors. They said the company treated them unfairly. It was unfair because of their race and because they were women. The company had not hired any Black women for assembly line jobs before 1970. Then layoffs came. The rule was: the last people hired are the first ones fired. That rule cut almost all of them.
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In 1976, a group of Black women sued General Motors for discrimination. They argued they had been treated unfairly because of their race and their gender. The company had not hired any Black women for assembly line work before 1970, and when layoffs came under a last-hired, first-fired policy, it eliminated nearly all of them.
The court's logic was exact. It said General Motors did not treat Black people unfairly. Some Black men worked there. It said the company did not treat women unfairly. Some white women worked there. So the court said there was no unfair treatment at all. The Black women fell through the gap between the groups the law could see. What was done to them had no name the law knew.
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The court's reasoning was precise: General Motors wasn't discriminating against Black people — some Black men worked there. And it wasn't discriminating against women — some white women worked there. Therefore there was no discrimination. The Black women fell through the gap between the legally recognized categories. What was being done to them had no name the law could see.
Kimberlé Crenshaw read that case thirteen years later. She gave the gap a name. She called it intersectionality. The gap was already there before she named it. The name let people talk about it. This was not mainly a law idea. It was an idea about how things are built. We build tools to fight unfair treatment. We build them around one kind of experience. Some people are treated unfairly because two things are true at once. Those people fall through. The gap is not a crack in a system that works fine. The system is doing just what it was built to do. It works for the people whose lives shaped it. It fails the people it was never built to see.
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Kimberlé Crenshaw read that case thirteen years later and named the gap. She called it intersectionality. The structure was there before she named it; the name made it speakable. Intersectionality was not primarily a legal concept. It was a structural argument: the frameworks we build to address oppression are built around particular experiences, and the people whose oppression arises from the combination of categories fall through. The gap is not a crack in an otherwise coherent system. It is the system working as designed — for the people whose experiences shaped its design, against the people whose experiences the design couldn't see.
The same logic runs through other rules too. Zoning law. Permit systems. Tax codes. Each one gives life to what it can name. It holds life back from what it cannot name.
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The same logic runs through zoning law, permitting systems, tax codes — any framework that grants existence to what it can name and withholds it from what it can't.
In 2019 we wanted to build a restaurant with two Airbnb rooms above it. The city of Norfolk had no rule that fit it. Two short-term rental rooms over a restaurant did not match any group the city had. And if a thing is not clearly allowed, it is not allowed. Having no group for it is itself a choice. In the end the city called us a bed and breakfast. That made no real sense. A bed and breakfast must have at least four rooms. We had two. But it was the closest box the rules had. It took more than a year. I kept thinking about all the things that never got made. Businesses. Homes. Shared spaces. They never started because no one had named the group for them yet. Ostrom studied the commons. Part of her work is about this. A commons can work when the people in it are allowed to make their own rules. When the law has no name for the setup, the setup cannot happen. It does not matter how well it would have worked. This is one way enclosure works. Not by taking what is here. By stopping what could be.
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In 2019 the city of Norfolk had no mixed-use occupancy designation that covered what we were trying to build: a restaurant with two Airbnb rooms above it. Two short-term rental rooms above a restaurant didn't fit any existing category. And if something isn't explicitly permitted, it's disallowed — the absence of a category is itself a decision. The city eventually designated us a bed and breakfast, which was functionally absurd — bed and breakfast zoning requires a minimum of four rooms, and we had two. But it was the closest box the code contained. It took over a year.
I kept thinking about how many arrangements — businesses, households, community spaces — had simply never come into existence because no one had named the category yet. Ostrom's work on the commons is partly about this: one of the conditions that allows commons governance to function is the right of communities to devise their own institutions. When the legal framework doesn't recognize the arrangement, the arrangement can't happen, no matter how well it might have worked. This is enclosure operating through absence rather than force — not taking what exists, but preventing what could.
The gap is not always mean. Sometimes it just cannot see. The result for what gets to exist is the same.
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The gap is not always hostile. Sometimes it is simply blind. The effect on what gets to exist is the same.
Sylvia Wynter spent years trying to write the Caribbean into being. Not as a backdrop for European stories. As the center of its own history. As its own ways of being human. That work led to her big idea. She told a story about being human from a spot the old idea of "human" had shut out. You cannot write Caribbean history with care and miss one fact. The people in it were sorted as less than fully human. Once you see that, you have to ask more. Who made that sorting? When? Why? Follow the question far enough and you reach a claim. The very idea of the "human" was built to make an outside. In the Middle Ages, Christian Europe had one way to know what a human was. It came from religion. To be fully human was to be made in the image of God. The Renaissance changed this. A new figure stood at the center. Europe called him Man. He was a thinking person who ruled himself. He could master nature by reason. But Man was not a picture of all people. He was a picture of one kind of person. Schooled. Owning property. European. Male. His traits were turned into the meaning of "fully human." Everyone else was measured against him and judged as less. Wynter has a name for this. She calls it overrepresentation. One group's picture of itself became the meaning of Human for all. Everyone else was measured against a mirror they did not make. A version of this is happening right now. A large language model gives you the average of human writing. It guesses the most likely next word. It builds that guess from everything ever written down. It is very useful for many things. But it cannot make one thing. It cannot make singularity. That is the one true thing a person or a group knows that no average can reach. The most important thing about anyone is the very thing an average cannot hold. Wynter's overrepresentation is not an old mistake we have fixed. It keeps coming back in new shapes. Our systems keep reaching for one all-purpose human to aim at. And that human is always one group's self-portrait pretending to be a mirror.
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Sylvia Wynter spent years trying to write the Caribbean into literary existence — not as backdrop for European stories but as the center of its own history, its own ways of being human. That practice — telling a story about what it means to be human from a position the existing category of the human had excluded — is where the theoretical argument came from. You cannot write Caribbean history seriously without noticing that the people in it have been systematically classified as less than fully human. You cannot notice that without asking who made the classification, when, and for what purpose. When you follow that question far enough, you arrive at the claim: the category of the human itself was constructed to produce the outside.
Medieval Christian Europe understood what human beings were through a theological framework — to be fully human was to be made in the image of God. The Renaissance shifted this. The figure that emerged at the center of European humanism was Man — a rational, self-determining agent, capable of mastering nature through reason. But Man was not a description of the human species. He was a portrait of a specific kind of person — educated, propertied, European, male — whose particular attributes were elevated into the definition of what it means to be fully human. Everyone else was measured against this standard and found deficient.
Wynter calls this overrepresentation: one civilization's self-portrait became the definition of the Human itself. Everyone else was measured against a mirror they didn't make.
There is a version of this argument running through the present moment. The large language model produces the statistical average of human expression — the most probable next word, synthesized from everything that has been written down. It is extraordinarily useful for many things. What it cannot produce is singularity: the specific, irreducible thing that a particular person or community knows that no averaging process can recover. The most important thing about any person is precisely what averaging cannot hold. Wynter's overrepresentation is not a medieval error that modernity corrected — it is a structural tendency that keeps finding new forms, because the systems we build keep reaching for a universal human to optimize against, and the universal human is always someone's self-portrait pretending to be a mirror.
You cannot mark people as there to be used up unless one thing comes first. First a framework must place them outside the group of fully human people. You cannot make colonized people who help in their own ruling unless one thing comes first. First an idea of the human must put the colonized outside it. Necropolitics needs a choice made ahead of time. The choice that some lives are not worth caring for. The racial shape of capitalism needs a framework made ahead of time. One that makes the sorting look like something other than a crime. All of it rests on one thing. A made-up meaning of the human, born at a certain time in history. It was built to shut people out. It has worked that way ever since.
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You cannot classify people as available for extraction without a prior framework that places them outside the category of the fully human. You cannot produce colonized subjects who cooperate in their own subjection without a prior classification of what the human is that places the colonized outside it. Necropolitics requires a prior decision that certain lives are not worth managing. The racial architecture of capitalism requires a prior framework that makes the classification legible as something other than crime. All of it rests here: a specific, historical, constructed definition of the human that was designed to exclude and has been functioning as designed ever since.
Here is the part that shakes everyone. Decolonization is not just being let into the group of the human as it stands now. It is building that group again from the ground up. A break at the deepest level. The code of Man itself is broken. Then a different human can come to be. Some development economics treats the Western capitalist path as the goal for everyone. That hides the overrepresented Man inside it as the secret norm. Some school courses treat European thought as the main story. They treat all other thought as a side note. They do the same thing. These are the overrepresentation of Man built into our systems. It runs so deep it feels like plain reality, not a choice.
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The political implication is the one that unsettles everyone: decolonization is not admission to the category of the human as currently defined. It is the reconstruction of that category from the ground up. Rupture, at the deepest possible scale — the code of Man itself broken, so a different human can become. Development economics that treats Western capitalist modernization as the destination for everyone else embeds the overrepresented Man as its implicit norm. Educational curricula that treat European intellectual history as the curriculum and everything else as regional addition do the same. These are the overrepresentation of Man institutionalized, running so deep it feels like reality rather than choice.
Kimberlé Crenshaw kept meeting the same problem. She met it in her classes. She met it in the legal cases she read. The law could see race. The law could see sex. But it could not see her. The law's groups were built around other people. It had no way to talk about both at once. One case showed this clearly: DeGraffenreid v. General Motors. The law on race came mostly from cases about Black men. The law on sex came mostly from cases about white women. If your harm came from just one of these, the law worked. If your harm came from both at once, the law could not see it. No one made the gap on purpose. The law was just built so the two could not be talked about together. This gap is not random. It leaves out the people who are hurt the most. These are the people harmed by two things at once. Look at the past. The labor movement helped white workers and shut out Black workers. Some who fought for white women's right to vote made deals with people who backed segregation. The disability rights movement was built around white, middle-class disabled people. Each time, the group was built around its most powerful members. The people caught in the middle fell through. Who fell through was not an accident. It showed whose life had shaped the rules.
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Kimberlé Crenshaw arrived at the intersection constantly — in her coursework, in the cases she studied, in the frameworks she was being trained to use. The law could see race. It could see sex. It consistently could not see her — not because she was invisible, but because the categories it used had been built around other people's experiences, and the combination was unspeakable within the available frameworks.
DeGraffenreid v. General Motors made the structure visible as structure. The legal framework available — race discrimination law developed primarily around the experiences of Black men, sex discrimination law developed primarily around the experiences of white women — was adequate for people whose oppression arrived through one axis. For people whose oppression arose from the combination, the framework was invisible. Not because nobody tried to fit them in, but because the architecture made the combination unspeakable.
The gap is not random. It systematically excludes the most vulnerable — the people whose oppression is produced by the combination of categories that each single-axis framework addresses separately. The labor movement that organized white workers and excluded Black workers. The feminist movement that fought for white women's suffrage while forming alliances with segregationists. The disability rights movement built around white, middle-class disabled people. In each case, the framework was built from the most advantaged among its intended constituency. The people at the intersections fell through — and the pattern of who fell through was not coincidental. It reflected whose experience had shaped the framework's construction.
This has a clear and hard lesson for building a commons. Say you build a commons around its most powerful members. Then it will keep the same unfairness it was meant to end. It will look open to all. But it will really just serve the people who are easiest to see. A real commons must start from the people who are left out the most. At each step, it must ask: who can the current rules not see? Then it must build toward them, not away from them. This is slower. But it is the only way to build something that truly fights enclosure. Any other way just builds a small version of the same trap.
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The implication for commons-building is direct and uncomfortable. A commons built from the most advantaged among its dependents will reproduce the exclusions it was supposed to overcome. It will look inclusive while functionally serving those whose power makes them most legible. Genuine commons governance must start from the most excluded: must ask, at every stage, whose experience the current framework cannot see, and build toward that rather than away from it. That is slower. It is the only way to build something that actually threatens enclosure rather than constructing a smaller version of it.
Crenshaw was not the first. A group called the Combahee River Collective had named the same thing twelve years before. They just said it in a different way. They were a group of Black feminist lesbian socialist women. They started in Boston in 1974. They named the group after the Combahee River raid of 1863. Harriet Tubman planned that raid and steered the boats up the river herself. She was the first woman in the Civil War to plan and lead an armed raid, and more than seven hundred people came out of slavery in a single night. For ten years before that, she had walked people north on foot, in the dark, and never lost one. She could read the land better than the army could: she ran the scouts, found the hidden Confederate mines in the river, and moved without being seen while she brought others out unseen behind her. She is the tracker, made real. The name itself carried their history. Their 1977 statement said it plainly: the big systems that hold people down are linked together. If Black women were free, then all the other systems would have to fall too. People left out of every group can not be only half free. They did not ask for a spot in the old groups. They wanted to break the groups apart so something new could grow. They read the world together. And they did the work itself before it had a name. They held meetings to raise each other up. They helped each other directly. They taught each other.
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Crenshaw was not first. The Combahee River Collective had named the same structure twelve years earlier, in a different register.
A Black feminist lesbian socialist collective, founded in Boston in 1974 — named for the Combahee River raid of 1863. Harriet Tubman planned that raid and guided the gunboats up the river herself, the first woman in the Civil War to plan and lead an armed raid; more than seven hundred people came out of slavery in a single night. She had spent the decade before it walking people north on foot, in the dark, and never lost one. The reading of the terrain was hers, not the army's — she ran the scouts, mapped the Confederate mines in the river, moved unseen and brought the unseen out behind her. This is the tracker, in the flesh — the craft turned against the men who thought they owned the ground. The lineage carried in the naming itself. Their 1977 statement said it plainly: the major systems of oppression are interlocking. If Black women were free, the destruction of all the other systems of oppression would have to follow — because the freedom of those at the intersection of every excluded category cannot be partial.
They were not arguing for a place in the existing categories. They were rupturing the categories so something else could be. The reading was collective. The wizard work was the practice itself — consciousness-raising circles, mutual aid, political education — before there was a theoretical name.
Audre Lorde talked with the Combahee group in the late 1970s. She was Black, lesbian, a mother, a poet, and a cancer survivor. She said it more sharply than anyone. The master's tools will never take down the master's house, she said in 1979. There is no such thing as a single-issue fight, she said in 1982, because we do not live single-issue lives. Build your own tools. Live the real lives we live. The ideas come after that.
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Audre Lorde was in dialogue with Combahee through the late 1970s. Black, lesbian, mother, poet, cancer-survivor. She put it sharper than anyone.
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house (1979). There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not live single-issue lives (1982).
Build different tools. Live the lives we actually live. The frameworks follow.
Angela Davis has been building in this same way. She has done it longer than most people have even thought about it. Her point is about how things are set up. The prison is not an answer to crime, she says. It is a way to manage the people that the economy has cast aside. These people are pushed out, and the prison makes that permanent. It runs them, and it pays for it. Davis made this point many years before Mbembe gave it the name necropolitics. Black radical thinkers got there first. The European thinkers were still on their way. Mbembe read Davis. The path was already there. Here are the numbers. In 1971 about 200,000 people were in U.S. state and federal prisons. By 2008 there were 2.3 million. That was the highest rate in the world. Clear choices made it happen. Laws forced long set sentences, and they were used more harshly on people by race. Public mental health care was cut, so sick people went to jail instead of hospitals. Public housing was torn down, so people lost homes, and then being homeless was made a crime. Each choice used the same logic. Do not fix what makes people poor and cast out. Just lock them up. A prison costs less than a home, less than mental health care, less than a real chance — but only if you do not count the people inside as a cost. Davis ends where Wynter and Crenshaw do, said in plain terms. Abolition does not mean close every prison tomorrow. It means build a world that does not need them. Stable homes. Mental health care in the community. An economy people share in. Ways to repair harm that do not cut a person off from others. There is a name for this: abolition geography. Follow the chain of choices that pull money away from people, and change the choice at every link. Move resources to where people live, and the prison is no longer needed.
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Angela Davis has been building in exactly that direction longer than most people have been thinking about it.
Her argument is structural: the prison is not a response to crime. It is an institution for managing the people capitalism has made surplus — the outside made permanent, administered, funded. Davis was making this argument decades before Mbembe named it necropolitics. The Black radical tradition had already arrived where the European theoretical tradition was still heading. Mbembe was reading Davis. The lineage was already there: the wizard before the wizard's name. In 1971 there were roughly 200,000 people in U.S. state and federal prisons; by 2008 there were 2.3 million — the highest rate in the world, produced by traceable decisions: mandatory minimum laws applied with documented racial disparity, the defunding of public mental health care that moved people from hospitals to jails, the destruction of public housing that produced homelessness and then criminalized the homeless. Each decision followed the same logic — instead of addressing the material conditions producing surplus people, enclose them. The prison is cheaper than housing, cheaper than mental health care, cheaper than economic opportunity, if you don't count the people inside it as costs.
Davis's political conclusion is also Wynter's and Crenshaw's, stated in material terms: abolition is not the demand to close prisons overnight. It is the demand to build the world that doesn't need them. Housing stability. Community mental health infrastructure. Economic democracy. Restorative justice processes that address harm without severing community bonds. There is a name for this: abolition geography — trace the chain of disinvestment decisions that produces incarcerable surplus people, and change the investment decisions at every link. Change the geographic organization of resources, and the prison becomes structurally unnecessary.
These are shared things people can build. Build them big enough. Then they meet the needs that prison now handles by locking people away. Build the world that does not need the cage. Then the cage is no longer needed. Abolition is the commons idea used on the question Mbembe asks. A society has decided whose death is okay. It put that choice in a real building, with a budget and a staff. So what do you build instead?
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These are the commons institutions that, built at scale, address the conditions that incarceration currently manages by enclosing them. Build the world that doesn't need the cage, and the cage becomes structurally unnecessary. The abolitionist project is the commons project applied to the question Mbembe asks: what do you build when the answer to whose death is acceptable has been institutionalized in a building with a budget and a staff?
Davis asks: what do you build when the money choices have already been made? For me, that question is not just an idea. It is real.
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Davis's question — what do you build when the investment calculus has already decided? — is not abstract for me.
Norfolk has the port. It has most of the big shipyards. It has many military bases. The bases pay no property tax. Most people who live here did not choose to be here. They are here on short military duty, or they were born here and have not found a way to leave. The people who do choose Norfolk mostly choose it for family. A few choose it because they see something here worth building. When we moved here, we saw a chance. It is a mid-size city with good bones, with a waterfront, with rent low enough to still let you live a free, artistic life — if you got here before the developers did. We wanted to build something. An art colony. A place for culture. The kind of thing a city like this can grow into if someone decides to make it happen.
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Norfolk holds the port, most of the major shipyards, and a concentration of military bases. The bases don't pay property tax. The people living here mostly aren't choosing to be here — they're on temporary assignment, or they were born here and haven't figured out how to leave. The people actively choosing Norfolk are choosing it for family, mostly, with a small proportion of people who see something in the place worth building toward. When we moved here we saw the possibility: a mid-size city with bones, with a waterfront, with the kind of rent that could still support a bohemian life if you arrived before the developers. We wanted to build something — an art colony, a cultural node, the thing that cities like this can become if someone decides to.
The cost was too high. Not the cost in money — the cost built into how the place works. The big money choices were already made, at every level. The military made them. The shipyards made them. The way the city set up its taxes made them. So did the choices about which neighborhoods get cared for and which get left bare. What we wanted to build did not fit the system. The system was not neutral. People built it to get one kind of result. It was very good at making those results, and very hard to make any other kind.
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The cost was too great. Not the financial cost — the structural cost. The investment calculus had already been made, at every level: by the military, by the shipyards, by the city's tax base arrangements, by the decisions about which neighborhoods get managed and which get left exposed. What we were proposing to build didn't fit the framework. The framework wasn't neutral. It had been built by people optimizing for a different set of outcomes, and it was very good at producing those outcomes and very resistant to producing others.
Davis's abolitionist geography means following those money choices and changing each one. That is the work. It takes longer than I thought. It goes deeper into how things are built than I wanted. But that is where the choices live. And choices can be made a different way.
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Davis's abolitionist geography is about tracing those investment decisions and changing them at every link. That is the work. It is longer than I expected and more structural than I wanted it to be. But structure is where the decisions live — and decisions can be made differently.
The bombs kept coming. People kept moving into Dynamite Hill anyway. That is also the tradition. It has been growing for hundreds of years. The question is whether it will grow big enough to match what we need. The next chapters are about people who decided it would. The work they did. What lasted.
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The bombs kept coming and people kept moving into Dynamite Hill anyway. That is also the tradition. It has been building for centuries. The question is whether it will reach the scale the conditions require.
The next chapters are about people who decided it would. The work they did. What survived.