Diluting Radical History: Blood in the Water and the Politics of Erasure
In this incisive critique, Orisanmi Burton argues that Heather Ann Thompson’s acclaimed book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising and Its Legacy actively undermines the significance of the rebellion by erasing racial violence from the normal routines of prison life, ignoring key aspects of the rebels’ critique of prisons, and distorting their radical abolitionist politics.