Angola Prison’s Black Ecologies

This talk fuses ethnography, spatial analysis, interviews, and archival research to explore the ways that people incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison, experience the uneven impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Using a Black Ecologies framework, this presentation explores the lived experiences of people enduring the effects of climate disasters while incarcerated, as well as the important political and intellectual contributions made by Angola’s prisoners since the mid-19th century. Despite unlivable conditions, incarcerated people at Angola have provided crucial critiques of the prison industrial complex. These insights, which will be explored in depth in this talk, crystallize an emergent form of authoritarianism that articulates itself at the convergence of anthropogenic climate change, racial capitalism, and incarceration.