This 5 live session class examines the origins, evolution and ideas about policing. We consider theories and critiques of policing including those that consider policing to be disciplinary power, as an apparatus of class rule, a white supremacist instrument, a necessary democratic institution and others.
We ask where do the police come from? What do they do? Whose interests do they serve? Why do they dress like that? How are they or might they be legitimized? Why might they be necessary? Why might they be abolished? What is the relationship between the “extrajudicial,” the lynch mob and the police? What accounts for the apparent tension between policing, gender, race and class? Is policing an inherently anti-Black institution?
We will look at struggles against police power and confinement and the writings (free online links provided) of critics of the police including George Jackson, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, Egon Bittner, V. I. Lenin, Ida B. Wells, Angela Davis, and Bobby Seale in an attempt to (theoretically) deconstruct the police.
Weekly Breakdown:
Week 1 – Genealogies of the Constabulary
• Theories on the origins of the police
• The Function of the Police in Modern Society
Week 2 – On Patriotism and the State
• On the Colony | The Repressive Apparatus
• Are we nationalists or nationalized? Manufacturing allegiance to oppression
Week 3 – Ruling Class and Ruling Class Ideas
• The Ideological Apparatus
• Colonial governmentality, invisible and daily policing
Week 4 – Law, Race and Confinement
• Are prisons obsolete?
• The Apartheid “Rule of Law”
Week 5 – Policed Protest of Police Violence
• Political demonstration or parade?
• Settler-police killings and the spectacle of the colonized’s death
format
- 2 sections, choose Tuesdays OR Saturdays
- 5 live virtual sessions, 90 minutes each
- Tuesdays beginning Sept 2 6:30 PM ET | Saturdays beginning Sept 6 12:30 PM ET
- Low-waged?/student? Contact about sliding scale.
about the professor
Dr. Yannick Giovanni Marshall is a faculty member teaching Contemporary Black Thought in the School of Critical Studies, CalArts (on self-imposed exile) and author of The End of Supplication: The Invention of Prostrate Blackness as a Replacement for the Maroon (Bloomsbury, 2025). His essays and interviews have appeared in Al Jazeera (including the influential “Black liberal, Your Time is Up”), Current Affairs, Black Perspectives, and international platforms for abolitionist and anti-colonial thought. He holds a PhD in African Studies from Columbia University’s MESAAS department and an MA in African American Studies from the same institution. He brings nearly a decade of university-level teaching experience, with classes that unfold less like lectures and more like literary events—immersive, poetic, and rooted in Black anti-colonial tradition.
*Pre-Order Price. Lectures available Sept 15, 2025.
what former students say
“It’s not often in academia that I feel heard and given a call to action that is both practical and authentic. This course introduced me to marronage as a foundation towards anti-colonialism. Through an analytical lens of the ‘long-movement’, Yannick manages to challenge popularized ideals of liberal thought with sharp criticism, wit and humor. The course is structured around readings, but its essence is serious critique delivered through sharp humor and honest conversation.”
— Reina Akkouche Halabi, The End of Supplication, Graphic Designer, Graduate Student
“Yannick changed everything I thought I knew about radical pedagogy. His courses consistently challenged students to see differently, read differently, and act differently. As both a teaching assistant and student, I found Yannick’s classroom to be a space of generative, provocative, and courageous questioning.”
— Jacob Blumberg, Filmmaker and Graduate Student, Black Crime in Lynch Mob Society, CalArts
“Yannick’s course stands out as one of the most transformative educational experiences I’ve had. Through probing questions and dialogue, he challenged widely accepted constructs that empires use to self-legitimize and that liberal discourses rely on to stifle resistance.
Yannick creates a uniquely candid space for students to push beyond the rigid boundaries of academia. He expanded my perspective and equipped me with sharper tools to debate and resist.”
— Tara, Educator and Graduate Student, Deconstructing the Police CalArts
Yannick Giovanni Marshall 