Epistemic Carcerality and Resistance in Higher Education

• In Event: Navigating Unjust Institutions: Visions of Educational Justice

Abstract

Scholars have demonstrated that excluding people with histories of involvement in the criminal legal system (CLS-involved people) from college perpetuates racial and economic injustice. Another under-examined form of injustice—epistemic injustice—also confronts CLS-involved people in higher education contexts and beyond, intersecting with and compounding racial and economic injustices. In this conceptual paper, we introduce the term epistemic carcerality to refer to a form of epistemic oppression that restricts the epistemic agency of CLS-involved people. Using methods of empirically-engaged philosophy, we examine the epistemic dimensions of carcerality in U.S. higher education by examining evidence of resistance to epistemic injustice undertaken by CLS-involved people (and their allies).

Authors

• Rebecca M. Taylor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Nicole Lindahl-Ruiz, University of California - Berkeley