After Accountability: A Critical Genealogy of a Concept

by Pinko (Editor), Lou Cornum (Contributor), Max Fox (Contributor)

A concept just short of a program, accountability has been taken up as a core principle within leftist organizing and activity over the past quarter century. While it invokes a particular vocabulary and set of procedures, it has also come to describe a more expansive, if often vague, approach to addressing harm within movement work. The term’s sudden, widespread adoption as abolitionist concepts began to circulate broadly in recent years cast light on certain shifts in its meaning, renewing the urgency of understanding its relation to militant history and practice.
After Accountability is an oral history and critical genealogy of this decisive movement concept that gathers interviews with eight transformative justice practitioners, socialist labor organizers, incarcerated abolitionists, and activists on the left conducted by members of the Pinko collective. An investigation into the theoretical foundations and current practice of accountability, this volume explores the term’s potential and limits, discovering in it traces of the past half-century’s struggles over the absence of community and the form revolutionary activity should take.

Genres: History

216 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2023

Reviews

[Madeleine · Rating 3 out of 5]

this collection tarries with critical questions: what is the contemporary use of concepts of accountability? what is missing? how can frameworks of accountability benefit the left in ways that center and materially serve people most impacted by state oppression? how can we better place accountability within its genealogies of indigenous practice (present and past), marxist struggle, and various left formations (incite!, critical resistance, etc). the text interviews a fantastic slate of organizers. i would read anything esteban kelly produces. at times i was aggressively nodding into the air, alone, and firmly underlining passages.

ultimately, what shines in this work is the interview subjects and their critical engagement with the concept of accountability. the editing of this collection is poor enough that it dilutes its effectiveness. not to be a virgo, but my notes:
- it would be more useful to include the bios of each subject at the onset of each of the interviews instead of lumping them all together at the beginning. i kept needing to turn back to the intro at the start of each chapter.
- the interviewers were featured way too prominently, and the interviews should have been more deeply condensed for clarity and narrative
- the interview subjects should have been in more rigorous conversation with one another. for instance, it would have been useful to select 6-7 core questions for each interview subject that get at the collection’s engagement around how accountability is bound up in community/erotics/abolition/anticapitalism. i would have loved it too if the subjects could actually speak to one another, be in dialogue, ask one another questions. it also might have helped if the editorial body had spent some time analyzing each interview at its close or spending time in the concluding essay more closely drawing connections and lingering questions between their discussions.
- i absolutely loathed the way the editors lumped discussion of rape in with a section on the erotic/cruising/movement dating, and found their arguments uncompelling, underexplored, and frankly an inaccurate assessment of what the erotic is, as thinkers like audre lorde would define it
- the collection brought up INCITE! like, all the time, but one of the interviewees briefly acknowledged that they are not even sure if the collective is still active. i can’t think of a thing they have done in the past decade. but they were still name dropped in the conclusion like a present tense formation. plus, there’s no mention of andrea smith’s leadership role in the collective, which in a collection about accountability feels extra confusing.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first book review I ever wrote was of a book criticizing Capitalism. Since I have plenty of critiques myself, I enjoyed most of it. Unfortunately, it was written by a Communist, so the thesis of the book was that if we just replace Capitalism with Communism everything would be fine. I think this theory is completely bonkers. Eleven years later I picked up this book. I kind of knew it was going to have a Communist tint (the collective who edited it is called Pinko) but I agree with some Commie stuff, and I have an interest in the way movements deal with conflict, so I read it.

There were some solid parts of collection of interviews with various people in the movement. The editor's statement that they wanted to “trace links between contemporary debates about accountability and an earlier era of struggle in the 1960s and '70s,” got me excited, though it didn't really seem like this happened. Sure, some of the interviewees talked about the past, but I didn't catch anywhere where they connected it to the present.

There was talk about how we need to interrupt cycles of harm, which is why it's important to not only include the survivor in a situation, but also the person who committed the harm. Finding that balance where neither side feels alienated and they both feel heard, is a tricky one. No one offered any one-sized-fits-all solution, which I appreciated; especially coming from commies.

Many, if not all, of the participants labeled themselves and their movements abolitionist, which I also find very non-commie. You know, gulags and all that. Still, I appreciated what they said about getting rid of the government in our heads, and especially about how being anti-prison means being anti-prison even when a cop gets sentenced.

Unfortunately, the few good parts were (to me anyway) spoiled by the weird views a lot of folks had. Their obsession with Mao made me want to close the book and move on (was Mao anti-authority? Was he an abolitionist?), but I was able to block that part out and keep going. What got me though, was the combination of ignorance and hatred of anarchy. Communists have a long history of screwing over and killing anarchists, so it's not much of a surprise, but I guess I hoped these folks had a little more ability to think critically. I'll end this with the two dumbest quotes in the book:

“Anarchism is very conducive to power consolidation. Everything is all whisper networks, and you can't call anybody out for being an authoritarian because oh, no, nobody's an authoritarian, and all of this kind of stuff.”

“But a true community, a community that meets the aspirations placed on the phrase “beloved community,” could exist only under communism.”