The Epistemic Pains of Imprisonment for Incarcerated Transgender People

• In Event: Roundtable: Epistemic Carcerality: Exploring the Intersections of Epistemic Injustice and the Carceral State

Abstract

Since they were first introduced, the pains of imprisonment (Sykes 1958)—the deprivations and associated suffering of incarceration—have provided a framework for punishment scholars to discuss experiences of incarceration, and the ever-shifting landscape of penal institutions’ logics, tools, and processes in relation to them (Haggerty and Bucerius 2020). More recently, scholars have emphasized the need to examine how these forces do not fall across all bodies equally, and to examine these pains at the intersections (Chui 2010). In this paper we draw on the compounding challenges we experience while conducting research with team members who are incarcerated and transgender (see Jenness and Rowland 2024 for additional information on this intersection). In doing so we explore the ways in which epistemic carcerality—the structural exclusion of system-impacted people from processes of knowledge production—produces pains particular to incarcerated transgender people.

Authors

• Alexis Rowland, University of California, Irvine

• Keramet Reiter, University of California, Irvine