Layers of Legibility: A Method for Anti-Carceral Intelligibility

Abstract Intelligibility is often seen as a paradigmatic goal for overcoming epistemic oppression. Understanding oppression helps to undo structures of ignorance and to create the grounds for moral, political, and legal arguments that protect marginalized people from being silenced. This is especially crucial for those who experience sexual and gendered violence, as they often struggle both to understand their own experiences and to make others understand them. In this paper, I argue that social epistemologists and feminist standpoint theorists often focus in an unvariegated way on intelligibility, inadvertently reinforcing reliance on carceral structures—systems that tend to reproduce harm and violence for survivors. This concern is particularly relevant in feminist anti-rape politics, where the pressure to make experiences legible often intersects with calls for carceral solutions, which fail to address the root causes of harm and maintain cultures of sexual and gender violence. To remedy this, I propose a new epistemological framework that preserves the importance of intelligibility while challenging carceral reliance. Instead of focusing solely on comprehension, I suggest approaching intelligibility as a process of navigating layers of social legibility, allowing for alternatives that better support survivors and resist carceral thinking.