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Utopia in D Yard

Prefigurative Politics and the Attica Prison Uprising of 1971

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2025

Sophie Capobianco
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Abstract

The Attica Prison Uprising has come to emblematize militant political organization inside prisons, influencing carceral rhetoric and policy throughout the contentious War on Crime. Despite its stigma as a short-lived rebellion that ended in a massacre, the Attica uprising is best understood as a site of prefigurative politics—political organization that aims to produce new social and political relations through their embodiment in the present. Political actors at Attica achieved remarkable success by experimenting with social roles beyond the purview of carceral surveillance and control.

Type
Student Essay
Information
TDR , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , June 2025 , pp. 5 - 24
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of New York University Tisch School of the Arts

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