Transjudicial Spaces: The Circulation and Disruption of Judicial Features in Cases of Sexual and Gendered Violence

Abstract

Looking to the circulation of judicial procedures, technologies, and logics, such as standards of evidence, rules of decorum, and processes for truth seeking, beyond courtrooms and the disruption of these features within courtrooms in cases of sexual and gendered violence, this project expands the way that rhetorical studies has conceptualized the relationship between spoken word, material world, and institutional power. It also generates political and cultural insights about the possibilities for complicating common distinctions between judicial and extrajudicial spaces in order to attend to the permeable boundaries of retributive institutions and disrupt the ever-expanding reach of the U.S. criminal legal system and the U.S. prison industrial complex. The monograph argues that, in light of these insights, the circulation and disruption of judicial features in cases of sexual and gendered violence impact the rhetorical means available to and subsequent expressions of those impacted by such violence, constituting what I call transjudicial spaces. Throughout this project, I conclude that transjudicial spaces emerge from three interlocking phenomena. First, residues of recognizably judicial structures, individuals’ prior experiences with the criminal legal system, and histories of police and prosecutorial violence shape the materialization of judicial matterings and make racial, gender, class, and disability status differences matter in relation to these histories. Second, the formal judicial features characteristic of criminal legal courtrooms are named, performed, or disrupted in cases of sexual and gendered violence, catalyzing material-discursive intra-actions that make spaces outside of courtrooms feel like judicial spaces and judicial spaces feel like something else. Finally, the circulation of judicial procedure beyond courtrooms via mediated and physiological systems erect contact zones that (re)constitute legal subjects who encounter transjudicial emergences.