Violence Work

“To follow the richly detailed, archivally researched story of Micol Seigel's Violence Work is to access a nuanced and convincing conceptualization of policing as a strategic socialization of the imminent and permanent threat of police violence. Reading Violence Work is a sustained exercise in demystification: any notion that policing is remotely separable from military power is thoroughly disrupted. Seigel's tremendously impactful book will reshape academic and public conversations and will serve as a pillar in the ongoing work of critical carceral studies, critical ethnic studies, and American studies.” — Dylan Rodríguez, author of Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition

“By looking at the short life and extended afterlife of the Office of Public Safety, Micol Seigel identifies how policing has always violated the ‘mythic borders’ that define it—between civilian and military forces, the state and market, and the local and global. Violence Work addresses urgent questions regarding contemporary policing and its supposedly increasing militarization, excessive brutality (with impunity), relation to corporate capital, and spread beyond local and national borders. It is required reading for anyone interested in state violence.” — A. Naomi Paik, author of Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II