In 2010, Jamaican police and military forces entered the West Kingston community of Tivoli Gardens to apprehend Christopher "Dudus" Coke, who had been ordered for extradition to the United States on gun- and drug-running charges. By the time Coke was detained, somewhere between 75 and 200 civilians had been killed. In Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation Deborah A. Thomas uses the 2010 incursion into Tivoli Gardens as a point of departure for theorizing the roots of contemporary state violence in Jamaica and post-plantation societies in general. Drawing on visual, oral historical, and colonial archives, Thomas traces the long-term legacies of the plantation system and how its governing logics continue to shape and replicate forms of violence. She places affect at the center of sovereignty in order to destabilize disembodied narratives of liberalism and progress, and to raise questions about recognition, repair, and accountability. In tying theories of politics, colonialism, race, and affect together with Jamaica's history, Thomas presents a robust framework for understanding what it means to be human in the plantation's wake.