{"title":"Challenging the Carceral Imaginary in a Digital Age: Epistemic Asymmetries and the Right to Be Forgotten","authors":"Andrea J. Pitts","doi":"10.5209/ltdl.76459","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper argues that debates regarding legal protections to preserve the privacy of data subjects, such as those involving the European Union’s right to be forgotten, have tended to overlook group-level forms of epistemic asymmetry and their impact on members of historically oppressed groups. In response, I develop what I consider an abolitionist approach to issues of digital justice. I begin by exploring international debates regarding digital privacy and the right to be forgotten. Then, I turn to the long history of informational asymmetries impacting racialized populations in the United States. Such asymmetries, I argue, comprise epistemic injustices that are also implicated within the patterns of racialized incarceration in the United States. The final section brings together questions regarding the impact of such epistemic injustices on incarcerated peoples and focuses specifically on the public availability of criminal histories in online search databases as a fundamental issue within conversations regarding digital justice. I thus conclude by building from the work of contemporary abolitionist writers to argue that the underlying concerns of an individualized right to be forgotten should be transformed into a collective effort to undermine societal carceral imaginaries.","PeriodicalId":40567,"journal":{"name":"Torres de Lucca-Revista Internacional de Filosofia Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Torres de Lucca-Revista Internacional de Filosofia Politica","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5209/ltdl.76459","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"PHILOSOPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper argues that debates regarding legal protections to preserve the privacy of data subjects, such as those involving the European Union’s right to be forgotten, have tended to overlook group-level forms of epistemic asymmetry and their impact on members of historically oppressed groups. In response, I develop what I consider an abolitionist approach to issues of digital justice. I begin by exploring international debates regarding digital privacy and the right to be forgotten. Then, I turn to the long history of informational asymmetries impacting racialized populations in the United States. Such asymmetries, I argue, comprise epistemic injustices that are also implicated within the patterns of racialized incarceration in the United States. The final section brings together questions regarding the impact of such epistemic injustices on incarcerated peoples and focuses specifically on the public availability of criminal histories in online search databases as a fundamental issue within conversations regarding digital justice. I thus conclude by building from the work of contemporary abolitionist writers to argue that the underlying concerns of an individualized right to be forgotten should be transformed into a collective effort to undermine societal carceral imaginaries.
期刊介绍:
The scientific scope of Las Torres de Lucca (International Journal of Political Philosophy) will be to comprehend the characteristics of political philosophy, in line with the interdisciplinary character that has operated in this field during the last several years. We welcome contributions from the areas traditionally linked directly to political philosophy (moral philosophy, philosophy of law, political theory), as well as from those that have been incorporated up to the present day (political economy, philosophy of history, psychology, neurophysiology and, to a lesser extent, other sciences) as long as their scope is focused on the treatment of public affairs and sheds light on contemporary political reflections. In the same way, the reference to classic problems should be brought to bear on contemporary questions. The journal does not commit itself to any school of thought, style or ideology. However, we do commit ourselves to argumentative rigor and expositive clarity. Thus, the new publication is directed towards the academic environment and designed for the specialized reader; but the publication also aspires to awake interest in the reader who is not technically formed in these disciplines, but is interested by the public questions that inevitably affect him or her. We expect that the scope of the journal will be international. Thus, articles will be published in Spanish and English, and original articles in French, Portuguese, Italian, or German will be accepted as exceptions (depending on their quality and relevance), translated into Spanish and published in a bilingual format. We are particularly interested in covering the Spanish/Latin American realm, particularly lacking in specialized publications of this type. With this in mind, we count on experts from the distinct countries included in this geographic area.