GSFS 335 - Queering Prison Abolition and Transformative Justice

FC ARHU

4 credits
For those who belong to marginalized communities, there is often intimate knowledge that the so-called state “justice” system is really a system of punishment grounded in injustice. We can look to movements from these communities to learn alternatives to state discipline. To combat systemic abuses of power that perpetrate wide-scale violence based on gender/sexuality, racialization, income, and education, there is a two-pronged approach: abolition, on the one hand; and transformative “justice” or transformative relations, on the other hand. In this course, we will gain a foundation in the history of abolition-from the fight against slavery and the settler colonial project of the US to the current movement to end prisons and punishment that reproduce anti-Black racism nationwide-as well as a foundation in theories and practices of transformative justice or relationships. In our survey of history, theory, and practice, we will focus in particular on gender and sexuality and how transformative justice has risen out of feminist and queer liberation movements. Transformative models of accountability are grounded in community building, developed out of the ways marginalized people have had to function outside of state apparatuses that don’t serve them. Therefore transformative justice is intimately tied to the dismantling of the power relations of cis-hetero-patriarchy and capitalism. In this course, we will read widely in the history of abolition and transformative justice, emphasizing the queer and feminist roots of these models. We will encounter the limitations and complexities of these efforts, and work together to collectively imagine a world where people are both irreplaceable and accountable.
This course is appropriate for new students.