This episode includes discussion of rape and sexual violence. We recognize that these topics may be difficult or distressing for some listeners, so please take care while listening and feel free to pause or step away at any time.

What happens when abolition meets its most common objection?

In Episode 2 of Unmaking the Prison Image, host Pooja Rangan brings together curator and scholar Rachel Nelson, documentary scholar Laliv Melamed, and feminist filmmaker Deepa Dhanraj to confront the question that often marks the limit of abolitionist imagination: “But what about the rapists and murderers?”

Drawing from personal experience and feminist media practice, the conversation examines how rape becomes a powerful moral and emotional boundary in debates about prisons across multiple geopolitical contexts.

Citations

• Rachel Nelson, “Time in the Shape of a Prison” (forthcoming)
• Nada Elia, “Weaponizing Rape”
• K. Lalitha and Deepa Dhanraj, Rupture, Loss, and Living: Minority Women Speak about Post-Conflict Life.
• Laliv Melamed, Sovereign Intimacy: Private Media and the Traces of Colonial Violence                             
• Pooja Rangan, The Documentary Audit: Listening and the Limits of Accountability

Additional Resources

• Aya Gruber, The Feminist War on Crime 
• Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie, Abolition. Feminism. Now.
• Prabha Kotiswaran, “Governance Feminism in the Post-Colony: India’s Rape Law Reforms of 2013”

• Deepa Dhanraj films

Unmaking the Prison Image is a production of Visualizing Abolition, a public scholarship initiative at the University of California, Santa Cruz, directed by Gina Dent and Rachel Nelson. Additional support comes from Amherst College.

Theme music for Visualizing Abolition is Pray by Terri Lyne Carrington and Social Science. Our cover art features an image from Christopher Harris’s still/here. Full episode transcripts are available at https://ias.ucsc.edu/unmaking-the-prison-image/.