Session 1:

Abolish Carceral Genders

Wednesday 14 April 2021 ~ 9:10 - 10:00am Pacific

Recording available here (71 mins)

Women's Journey from Prison to Prison

Seema Azad

Jailed revolutionary poet Varavara Rao has written in his jail diary, “A prison facility is no more than a manifestation of the prison-like world we live in.” I would like to restate this with a slight modification, “This world is a large prison within which women are confined to myriad, smaller prisons.” Isn’t it odd that women celebrate their transfer from these smaller household prisons to a larger jail? Women’s journey from a household prison to the prison allocated by the stated, is tragically very common and is often a result of our feudal-patriarchal order. Women’s attempts to free their bodies, emotions, and minds from this feudal-patriarchal set-up land them in prison.

It is my argument that the root of women’s imprisonment may not be established in individual actions, instead it is their social relations and patriarchal oppression which lead them to commit a “crime”. Consequently, the category of crime is not a fixed or given entity in law, it is socio-economically constituted. It is not surprising that while “hearing” cases in the court of law, lawyers, judges, and others focus on whether the crime was committed or not. They disassociate themselves from unearthing the socio-economic conditions that result in the crime in the first place.

In my experience when women suffering patriarchal oppression are imprisoned, they return either by imbibing feudal-patriarchal characteristics themselves or by further being oppressed by it. I support political activist Angela Davis’ position that prisons should not exist since they are not capable of reducing crime, instead we should find alternatives that can demolish the conditions for crime.

Through the narratives of some women with whom I spent time in prison, I want to highlight the reasons why we need think about abolishing prisons.

Seema Azad is a freelance journalist and a political activist based in Uttar Pradesh, India. She runs her own news magazine called ‘Dastak Naye Samay Ki’ (The Dawn of a New Era) and is associated with civil and democratic rights organization PUCL (People’s Union for Civil Liberties). She and her partner Vishwa Vijai were imprisoned in 2010 under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for allegedly being “Maoists”. They spent 2.5 years in prison and their trial is still going on. Seema has written her jail diary ‘Zindanama’ and her other publications are Surrogate Country, and ‘Aurat Ka Safar Jail se Jail Tak’ (Women’s Journey from Prison to Prison).

Translator: Shailza Sharma is a PhD student enrolled at University of Exeter. She is a qualified lawyer and an activist based in India. Shailza is also the co-founder of the online platform Detention Solidarity Network which is an online space to critically engage with the structures and experiences of detention that constitute the carceral state in India.

The Hidden Emotional Labor of Hope Work: Abolition in the Academy

S. M. Rodriguez

Abolitionist-academics who bring abolition into the classroom are “teaching to transgress” (hooks, 1994) quite literally in the service of and hope for freedom (Scott, 2019). As these scholar-activists engage in hope work – work that stems from passion and vision for a just world – they must navigate the additional, hidden toll of emotional labor: a “third shift” (Quaye et al. 2017). Scholars who have mapped out the experiences of scholar-activism have highlighted the burden of emotional labor, especially as it takes a disproportionate toll on feminized scholars and women (Bellas, 1999; Tiwari, Saraff and Nair, 2020), the untenured and adjunct faculty, and scholars of color (Quaye et al., 2017). This presentation draws on data gathered through interviews with 30 self-identified abolitionist academics working in universities. What I find, is, as emotional labor relates to abolition in the academy, the most common feelings described are hope, love, loneliness and fear or anxiety. While this research supports the earlier findings of other scholars of scholar-activism, I also found that those who experience personal histories of criminalization may be especially vulnerable to a disproportionate burden of emotional labor. That is, although almost all of the interviewed scholar-activists are emotionally invested – to some degree – in the work to progress toward a non-punitive society, not all are affected to the same degree. The emotionality hidden within the work may have implications for understanding career longevity versus pushout among academics.

S.M. Rodriguez is Assistant Professor of Criminology and Director, LGBTQ+ Studies at Hofstra University, Department of Sociology. They are the author of the book, The Economies of Queer Inclusion: Transnational Organizing for LGBTI Rights in Uganda (2019). Dr. Rodriguez is currently working on two book projects: Abolition in the Academy: Scholar-Activism and the Movement for Penal Abolition and Marked for Removal: Perpetual Coloniality, Gentrification, and Queer Abolitionist Praxis in New York City. A dedicated scholar-activist and educator committed to transformative change, Dr. Rodriguez seeks to contribute to our understanding of gender and racial justice as they intersect with social movements.