“<i>Mu, 49 Marks of Abolition</i> is a breathtaking work of impressive range. In a style that is remarkably poetic, Sora Y. Han moves from mourning her father’s death according to the Korean Buddhist conception of <i>mu</i> to Lacanian psychoanalysis, from contemporary experimental black and Asian American poetry to black critical theory, from US law-constitutional, carceral, and contract-to differential geometry and Korean history. I learned a great many things from this book.” - R. A. Judy, author of (Sentient Flesh: Thinking in Disorder, Poiesis in Black) “49 breaths to accompany a father on his final journey to the Ancestors; 49 stops along the penitentiary pilgrimage that is the <i>huis clos</i> of language; 49 periodic beats to move us through the thicket of legal theory into a destabilized poetics of off; 49 stepping stones into the mourning ground where law and poetry confront each other in the violence of grammar-49 times over <i>Mu</i> gifts us the means to mourn the split ‘Tongue of Adam’ that conscripts, constricts, and condemns.” - M. NourbeSe Philip, author of (Zong!)

In March 2020, Sora Y. Han learned her father was dying of cancer just as the COVID-19 pandemic arrived on California's shores. These two events led Han to introspection: “Who have I been writing to?” and “Who have I been writing for?” In her observance of the 49 days of mourning in Buddhist tradition, answers come in the form of muno thing, nothingness. Han’s poetic meditations on freedom struggle come alive in the empty spaces between words, letters, and pictograms spanning her many languages-English, Korean, Chinese, jazz, law, and poetry. Transliterating and dystranslating the writings of Fred Moten, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Jacques Lacan, Frantz Fanon, and others through the Korean alphabet, Han weaves the DMZ, Betty’s Case, the Thirteenth Amendment, Afro-pessimism, and psychoanalytic desire together into the open field of Bay Area radicalism. Mu is both a loving homage to and a playful subversion of political inheritances and the unsayable beyond law.
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Note on Etymologies  ix
Preface  xi
Acknowledgments  xxi
savoir black  1
terra incognita  29
nonperformance  63
non liquet blackness  103
the sur-round  131
res nulla loquitur  167
mu  187
Notes  207
Bibliography  227
Index  241
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781478020974
Publisert
2024-03-22
Utgiver
Duke University Press
Vekt
544 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
UP, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
280

Forfatter

Biografisk notat

Sora Y. Han is Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, Comparative Literature, and African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Letters of the Law: Race and the Fantasy of Colorblindness in American Law.