Insurgent Love: Abolition and Domestic Homicide

Domestic homicide involves violence at the most intimate level – the partner or family relationship. The most common strategy for addressing this kind of transgression relies on policing and prisons. But through examining commonly accepted typologies of intimate partner violence, Ardath Whynacht shows that policing can be understood as part of the same root problem as the violence it seeks to mend. This book illustrates that the origins of both the carceral state and toxic masculinity are situated in settler colonialism and racial capitalism.

Describing an experience of domestic homicide in her community and providing a deeply personal analysis of some of the most recent cases of homicide in Canada, the author inhabits the complexity of seeking abolitionist justice. Insurgent Love traces the major risk factors for domestic homicide within the structures of racial capitalism and suggests transformative, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, feminist approaches for safety, prevention and justice.