This intervention argues for a German carceral geography that takes the framework of abolition seriously to develop a deeper understanding and critique of the exercise of power in institutional spaces. My claim is that we need to adapt abolition as a theoretical perspective and form of knowledge that allows us to expand the analysis of carceral practices and rationalities beyond imprisonment to include other institutional spaces of racialising, classing and disabling marginalisation.

This paper aims to contribute to discussions on the development of language-based schools of thought in geography and how these are mobilized and de- and recontextualized when they travel beyond their origins. Against this backdrop, we study why, how and with what consequences German geographical knowledge traveled to Argentina in the 1940s following the employment of the four German geography professors Wilhelm Rohmeder, Gustav Fochler-Hauke, Fritz Machatschek and Willi Czajka in Tucumán.