Become Ungovernable

‘Freedom’, ‘justice,’ and ‘democracy’ will not survive the stewardship of capital and the state. Become Ungovernable is a provocative new work of political theory that set out to reclaim them. Revealing the mirage of dominant democratic thought and the false promises of liberal political ideologies, H. L. T. Quan offers an alternative approach: abolition feminism drawing on a kaleidoscope of refusal praxes, and a deep engagement with the Black Radical Tradition and queer analytics. With each chapter anchored with episodes from the long history of resistance and rebellions against tyranny, Quan calls for us to take up a feminist ethic of living rooted in the principles of radical inclusion, mutuality, and friendship as part of the larger toolkit for confronting fascism, white supremacy, and the neoliberal labor regime.

A sweeping, magisterial work of abolitionist feminist political theory

H.L.T. Quan is a political theorist and an award-winning filmmaker. She is an Associate Professor of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Quan is the author of Growth Against Democracy: Savage Developmentalism in the Modern World and editor of Cedric J. Robinson: On Racial Capitalism, Black Internationalism, and Cultures of Resistance.

Preface Part I: The Metaphysics of Ruling 1. Against Tyranny: An Introduction 2. The Myth of White Autarky 3. Democratic Thought and the Unthinkable 4. Love and Freedom: Jeffersonian Antidemocracy and the Politics of Governing 5. The Empty Sounds of Liberty Part II: Beyond Governing 6. From Home Politicus to Robo Sapiens: Transhumanism and the Tyranny of Techno-Aristocracy 7. iLife and Death: The New/Old Capitalist Algorithm 8. Governments Reform, People Revolt 9. Speculative Justice and the Politics of Mutuality 10. Towards a Democratic Ethic of Liberation