Carceral liberalism emerges from the confluence of neoliberalism, carcerality, and patriarchy to construct a powerful ruse disguised as freedom. It waves the feminist flag while keeping most women still at the margins. It speaks of a post-race society while one in three Black men remain incarcerated. It sings the praises of capital while the dispossessed remain mired in debt. Shreerekha Pillai edits essays on carceral liberalism that continue the trajectory of the Combahee River Collective and the many people inspired by its vision of feminist solidarity and radical liberation. Academics, activists, writers, and a formerly incarcerated social worker look at feminist resurgence and resistance within, at the threshold of, and outside state violence; observe and record direct and indirect forms of carcerality sponsored by the state and shaped by state structures, traditions, and actors; and critique carcerality. Acclaimed poets like Honoree Fanonne Jeffers and Solmaz Sharif amplify the volume's themes in works that bookend each section. Cutting-edge yet historically grounded, Carceral Liberalism examines an American ideological creation that advances imperialism, anti-blackness, capitalism, and patriarchy. Contributors: Maria F. Curtis, Joanna Eleftheriou, Autumn Elizabeth and Zarinah Agnew and D Coulombe, Jeremy Eugene, Demita Frazier, Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, Alka Kurian, Cassandra D. Little, Beth Matusoff Merfish, Francisco Arguelles Paz y Puente, Shreerekha Pillai, Marta Romero-Delgado, Ravi Shankar, Solmaz Sharif, Shailza Sharma, Tria Blu Wakpa and Jennifer Musial, Javier Zamora
Shreerekha Pillai is a professor of humanities at the University of Houston, Clear Lake. She is the author of Women Writing Violence: The Novel and Radical Feminist Imaginaries.
Foreword Demita Frazier Acknowledgments Introduction Shreerekha Pillai Part One: Carceral Narratives and Fictions Poems: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, "Pantoum for a Black Man on a Greyhound Bus" and "Lost Letter #27: John Peters, Boston-Gaol to Phillis Wheatley Peters, Boston, December 3, 1784" 1. Carceral Trauma at the Intersections of Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality, and Maternity Cassandra D. Little 2. Prisons and Politics: Conceptualizing Prison Memoirs Shailza Sharma 3. Seeing Orange: Mediatizing the Prison Empire Shreerekha Pillai 4. Emptied Chairs and Faceless Inmates: A Critical Analysis of the Texas Prison Museum Beth Matusoff Merfish Poems: Ravi Shankar, "Against Innocence" and "Sunday School" The Stories that will not be Confined Poems: Solmaz Sharif, "Reaching Guantanamo" Part Two: Carceral Bodies and Systems Poem: Jeremy Eugene, "Space" 5. These Stories Will Not Be Confined Joanna Eleftheriou 6. Cornered: Day Laborers, Criminalization and Rituals of Democracy in Texas Francisco Arguelles Paz y Puente, aka Pancho 7. Resisting Criminalization: Principles, Practicalities, and Possibilities of Alternative Justices Beyond the State Autumn Elizabeth, Zarinah Agnew, D Coulombe 8. Going Carceral? Analyzing Written and Visual Representations of Prison Yoga Programs Tria Blu Wakpa and Jennifer Musial 9. Vacant Refuge, Unfinished Resettlement: Gendered Nativism and the Experience of Ambivalence among Displaced Syrian Iraqi and Women and Children in Houston, Texas Maria F. Curtis 10. Gendered Punishment and Social Control: Silenced Memories of Women in Wartime Peru Marta Romero-Delgado 11. Bad Girls of Pindra Tod Alka Kurian Poem: Javier Zamora, "Citizenship" Contributors Index
"A uniquely valuable intervention. Those of us--and I would say that is the majority of us who live our lives 'in freedom'--are importuned by the book's address, to wake up, to care, because what we perceive as our 'freedom' made available, so we think, as a consequence of living in the crucible of liberal ideals and beliefs--is inextricably bound up with the logics of incarceration."--Fawzia Afzal-Khan, author of Siren Song: Understanding Pakistan Through its Women Singers
