Against Carceral Common Sense: Learning to Teach Prison Abolitionism on the Inside-Out

• In Event: Roundtable Session 90
  In Roundtable Session: Learning, Knowledge Production, and Research in Social Movement/Civil Society Milieux

Abstract

This presentation examines what it means to teach, produce knowledge, and “learn in social action” (Foley, 1999) within and against North America’s invasive Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). By conceptualizing the PIC as a systemic arrangement of social power that is inherently oppressive, prison abolitionist educators underscore how the cultural and institutional site of “the prison” is no longer a place “outside and apart from our everyday lives, but instead shape[s] and deform[s] our identities, communities, and modes of social interaction” (Rodriguez, 2010, p. 8-9). For scholar-activist Dylan Rodriguez, teachers and professors are as complicit in justifying the “prison regime” as are the police, prison guards, and “law-and-order” pundits and politicians. My research underscores how teaching is never neutral in that both the liberal progressive and radical left educator is presented with only one of two choices: either passively maintain or actively disrupt the discursive practices of normalized state violence.
A recent themed issue of Radical Teacher (2010) dedicated itself to theorizing and presenting successful case studies of how abolitionist pedagogy and curricula is co-created by secondary teachers and college professors—already committed activists in abolitionist social movements –in the process of engaging their students to challenge common sense notions of “criminal justice.” My research expands on this seminal work by shifting the social location and sites of teaching and learning away from the traditional classroom in order to embrace “the widespread and powerful informal and incidental education and learning that occur around social and political struggle” (Foley, 1999, p. 7) By extension, my research challenges exclusionary professional labels that exclude the knowledge produced by those without formal academic training. Because the shadow of “prison regime” casts its shadow far beyond prison to encompass popular culture, media, legal education, health and human services, educational institutions, and beyond, my research has included the voices and analyses of people who learn to labor and educate others about prison abolitionism in a variety of non-traditional educational settings. I will present the diverse voices of public health nurses, harm reduction outreach workers, media justice activists, artists and poets, youth advocates, addiction counselors, alternative healers, community gardeners—all those who actively learn how to create alternatives to the overarching “prison regime.”
Although the work of teaching against a “carceral common sense” is political work that anyone can do, I argue in my research that it is best suited to those strategically laboring within the growing prison abolitionist movement. For this reason, I conducted semi-structured interviews, offered open-ended questions whereby abolitionist activists were asked to describe the meanings and feelings that they attach to learning in social action. Finally, I elaborate on my experiences as a participant observer at an instructor training aimed at bringing together prison abolitionists, popular educators, and their allies. By connecting with activists in diverse spaces as well as attending educational training sessions and teaching on the inside, I was present to both witness and learn from social action as it unfolded.

Author

• Lena Carla Palacios, McGill University