“O que resta além da crítica é desperdício”: uma análise feminista e interseccional sobre o encarceramento feminino

Abstract

Intersectional critical social theory is by no means antagonistic to Feminist Critical Theory. Although some authors within the latter maintain that there is a separation between theoretical production and political activism, both criticality and radicality are constructed in each through the self-reflexivity enabled by constant and interdisciplinary dialogue. Guided by a feminist critical imagination, this doctoral thesis in Psychology (UFC) has as its general objective the articulation of the debate between authors of U.S. Feminist Critical Theory and Marxist, post-structuralist, and decolonial authors from the Global South and Global North with Black feminist thought — radical and intersectional. The specific objectives are: (a) to situate Angela Davis within Feminist Critical Theory; (b) to understand the proposal of restorative justice (Davis) and its implications for struggles aimed at dismantling prison systems; (c) to articulate Patricia Hill Collins’s intersectional critical social theory and that of other contemporary Black feminist thinkers with Feminist Critical Theory; (d) to discuss the relationship between penal vulnerability and the normative frameworks (re)produced by the penal state and public security policies; and (e) to analyze the criminalization of incarcerated women through an intertwining of Feminist Critical Theory and intersectional critical social theory. This is, therefore, a theoretical study whose methodological development unfolds through the articulation of contributions from different feminist thinkers toward an immanent analysis of reality, used here as the basis for an expanded examination of the issue of women’s incarceration in Brazil. The thesis is divided into two parts, with three sections in the first part and two in the second. In the first section, the author situates Feminist Critical Theory and some of the disputes among intellectuals within this field. The second section discusses concepts from the Feminist Critical Theory of Angela Davis, Judith Butler, and Denise Ferreira da Silva related to struggles for dignity and justice—namely, prison abolitionism, normative frameworks, and raciality—presenting key elements for a situated critique of punitive neoliberalism and the increasing criminalization of women, especially Black women. The third, examines Patricia Hill Collins’s proposition of intersectional critical social theory, focusing on the epistemic resistance made possible through Black feminist thought. In the second part of this doctoral thesis, an intersectional analytical exercise on women’s incarceration is undertaken in two sections: one addressing penal selectivity and vulnerability, which result in the overrepresentation of poor and Black people in Brazilian prisons; and another focused on the challenges of addressing gender-specific needs and reducing rights violations amid the crisis of the Brazilian prison system. The propositions developed in both parts culminate in the defense of the author’s thesis: an intersectional Black Feminist Critical Theory that, in this research, made it possible to analyze how institutional racism and criminalizing frameworks operate in the production of penal vulnerability among the Black population—who constitute the majority within the Brazilian prison system—as well as violations of the fundamental rights of incarcerated women, in contexts where institutional racism and sexism intertwine through racist framings, social inequalities, and interconnected forms of oppression.