Teachers “Committed to a Livable Future”

Cultivating Womanist Anti-Carceral Praxis in Early Care and Education Settings

Abstract

Drawing from Audre Lorde’s commitment to a “livable future,” this article introduces womanist anti-carceral praxis and describes how early care and education teachers, scholars, and teacher educators may actualize their commitments to a livable future by embodying nine dispositions of womanist anti-carceral praxis. Bridging anti-carceral feminism and womanism, womanist anti-carceral praxis is rooted in Black women’s intellectual and theological work, everyday experiences, and everyday methods of activism and problem-solving extended to ending all forms of oppression, enclosure, and isolation. This approach (re)conceptualizes classroom practices by addressing investments, practices, policies, and technologies anchored in carceral logics—the assumptions, actions, materials, and structures anchored in surveillance, exclusion, and punishment. After describing the constitutive frameworks of anti-carceral feminism and womanism, the article concludes with prompts for teachers’ reflections and a discussion of implications toward hopeful possibilities for justice-oriented early care and education.