Incarcerated Scholars, Qualitative Inquiry, and Subjugated Knowledge: The Value of Incarcerated and Post-Incarcerated Scholars in the Age of Mass Incarceration

T he intellectual work of incarcerated scholars is often discounted and devalued. There is insight, however, to be gained from looking at the world from our perspective; the perspective of the marginalized who are captive in a secretive and closed world. Much like the value of subaltern theory on narratives of European imperial conquest (e.g. Yet opportunities for the (post)incarcerated to explore these counter-discourses are often blocked by private and public universities. Criminalization inhibits would-be scholars into the forays of academia, particularly at the graduate level. A research project conducted inside a maximum-security prison demonstrates how academia errs in this regard.