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"This book gives a theoretical and historical account of felon disenfranchisement, showing deep connections between punishment and citizenship practices in the United States. These connections are deployed quietly and yet perniciously as part of a political system of white supremacy, shaping contemporary regimes of punishment and governance"--

Michel Foucault once wrote, "Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable. It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation) that possesses revolutionary force."1 This affect of revolutionary force stems from the joyful militancy of bringing into existence the already possibly present worlds that are assumed to be impossible.2

In this reflection, I take up the contradiction of calling for justice to be delivered from the same institutions that, under contemporary conditions of settler-colonial and white supremacist hetero-patriarchy, are often themselves the sources of injustice. I argue for an orientation toward justice that grounds itself on its condition of failure, drawing on Beauvoir's existentialist ethics and queer theory's embrace of failure as a resource for critical analysis and liberation. From an abolitionist perspective, I thus call for thinking about justice as failure in order to better hear the voices and respond to the demands of those most marginalized by carceral logics and practices.