Against Carceral Feminism

Join us for an in coversation with Leah Cowan and Dr Molly Ackhurst on 'Against Carceral Feminism.' Every week it seems there is a fresh scandal involving abhorrent, racist, misogynist behaviour by police officers. Yet, in the UK, some of the loudest voices calling for further ‘protections’ from the police are feminists demanding stronger laws and harsher prison sentences. Mainstream British feminism is in many ways defined by its alliances with the law and its enforcers. Through discussions with one another's work Leah and molly explore two interconnected questions: why do feminists trust the police, and in turn what undergirds feminist investments and attachments to carceral systems and structures? Leah’s work suggests that it is only through grappling with the feminisms past and present that seek to shore up power and influence for an elite, white cohort of women, that we can struggle towards a capacious vision of justice germinated by those who have long known that the police don’t exist to protect us, and the law does not reduce harm in society. Through engagement with feminist work on the cultural nature of affect, molly explores the existence of a powerful state of stuckness. A mode of being that is produced by the emotional force of a key affective figure: the wounded survivor. In doing so she offers a provocation for what it may take reckon with the state of stuckness, and in turn offer less stuck futures.