Mu, 49 Marks of Abolition

Sora Y. Han is Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, Comparative Literature, and African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Letters of the Law: Race and the Fantasy of Colorblindness in American Law.

“Mu, 49 Marks of Abolition is a breathtaking work of impressive range. In a style that is remarkably poetic, Sora Y. Han moves from mourning her father’s death according to the Korean Buddhist conception of mu to Lacanian psychoanalysis, from contemporary experimental black and Asian American poetry to black critical theory, from US law-constitutional, carceral, and contract-to differential geometry and Korean history. I learned a great many things from this book.” - R. A. Judy, author of (Sentient Flesh: Thinking in Disorder, Poiesis in Black) “49 breaths to accompany a father on his final journey to the Ancestors; 49 stops along the penitentiary pilgrimage that is the huis clos of language; 49 periodic beats to move us through the thicket of legal theory into a destabilized poetics of off; 49 stepping stones into the mourning ground where law and poetry confront each other in the violence of grammar-49 times over Mu gifts us the means to mourn the split ‘Tongue of Adam’ that conscripts, constricts, and condemns.” - M. NourbeSe Philip, author of (Zong!)

• Note on Etymologies  ixPreface  xiAcknowledgments  xxisavoir black  1terra incognita  29nonperformance  63non liquet blackness  103the sur-round  131res nulla loquitur  167mu  187Notes  207Bibliography  227Index  241