Refusing Erasure: Lessons from Queer Prison Comix Artists in a Fascist Era

Amid contemporary backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which is fueling book bans and censorship, crucial strategies for resistance can be found among those who have long faced such repression of their attempts to imagine more creative, more diverse, and more just worlds: incarcerated comix artists. This presentation examines how the LGBTQ collective ABO Comix has used the affordances of comix to make gender and sexual diversity visible even in the oppressive context of the US prison industrial complex. Drawing on what Ramzi Fawaz has described as comics' particular power to challenge dominant models of gender and sexuality, artists with ABO Comix have found ways to create queer art and trans community while simultaneously resisting carceral censorship practices. These strategies include medium-specific tactics, such as comics' ability to go beyond realism in representation, as well as textual approaches to refusing erasure, such as sub-cultural references and evocative imagery. Additionally, ABO Comix relies on community-based solidarity in response to censorship, using comix to build relationships that enable LGBTQ people to survive in the face of the system's attempts to make them disappear. Scholars of carcerality from Michel Foucault onwards have described the prison system as the testing ground or model for disciplinary power; at the same time, movements for liberation have long been driven by prisoners' deep knowledge of the system's strengths and weaknesses. In this moment, the work of incarcerated LGBTQ comix artists can guide those who care about DEI toward strategies for resistance and liberation.