Interrogating Carceral Logics in Global Governance: A Feminist Abolitionist Conversation

Global governance operates through carceral logics and practices. This paper explores the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) through abolitionist literature to show how these ostensibly unrelated modes of global governance converge through carcerality. Using a reflective methodological approach informed by abolition feminism, we advance three interrelated arguments. First, that the carceral, and penal logics of the ICC and RAMSI, construct colonial histories as distant and forgotten. This results in the refashioning of violent and oppressive colonial practices. Next, we argue that, both the ICC and RAMSI demarcate these practices as common sense. They naturalise punishment and discipline, equating (colonial, Western) law with ‘order’ which further proliferates carceral logics and solidifies carceral practices. Finally, our exploration of history and ‘order’ shows how these modes of global governance are entangled with the (racist and colonial) systems of neoliberalism and capitalism. Our exploration of history and ‘order’ shows how these modes of global governance are entangled with the (racist and colonial) systems of neoliberalism and capitalism. We contend that global governance is constituted by, and constitutive of, carcerality within both domestic and international systems. By uncovering these interrelated arguments, and their implications for state-building and ‘justice’, we reiterate the importance of mapping carcerality throughout global governance, using collective reflection to do so.