Roundtable: A Criminology of Tarot: Reimagining Justice Beyond Law

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Sessions

Abstract/Description

This paper explores how tarot can be used as a creative and symbolic tool to think about justice, punishment, and transformation. Drawing on poetic inquiry and ancient philosophical ideas, it reimagines incarceration not just as legal control but as a lived, emotional, and spiritual experience. The project uses personal reflection, myth, and metaphor to challenge the limits of legal thinking. It offers a new way for criminologists to consider how people survive and make meaning under carceral power.

Sub Unit

• Area XIV. Roundtables

Individual Presentations

• Against the Hegemony of Law: Poetic Inquiry Criminology, Anaximander’s Apeiron, and the (De)(s)placement of Criminal Justice - Lucas Alan Dietsche, Adams State University

• Tarot, Theory, and Trajectory: Weaving Creativity, Quantum Criminology, and Personal Experience in Scholarly Becoming - Denise Ruth Woodall, University of North Georgia / American University

• The Fool Behind Bars: Tarot, Myth, and the Poetics of Carceral Transformation - Esther Marcella Hoffmann, Pacifica Institute