Entre o descrédito e a marginalização hermenêutica: um estudo de caso sobre a injustiça epistêmica e as mulheres acusadas de tráfico internacional de drogas

Abstract

In the communicational context of the judicial process, the testimony of women accused of drug trafficking is subject to epistemic injustices that prevent their experiences of exploitation from being effectively understood and transmitted. This research aims to analyze how these epistemic injustices work in the Brazilian criminal justice system. Thus, based on this theoretical framework, the following question was designed: How does epistemic injustice work in the Brazilian criminal justice system when a woman accused of drug trafficking reports in her testimony that she was exploited in order to transport the narcotic substance? Using a qualitative methodology called "single case study", the aim is to observe how credibility judgments occur in criminal prosecution; which identity prejudices affect the credibility attributed to the testimony of exploitation; how these prejudices work; what difficulties the defendant faces in representing her experience and perspective in the judicial context; and how this interferes in the process of reconstructing the facts. The technique used to examine the selected case was "critical discourse analysis", which aimed to capture in the discursive constructions and lexical choices of legal operators statements and ambivalences that would reveal power relations and the occurrence of epistemic injustices. As research findings, I identify the occurrence of various phenomena explored in social epistemology in debates about epistemic injustices, silencing and intentional ignorance that form an active epistemic shield as an institutionalized mechanism of criminal justice. In addition to promoting the persistent epistemic exclusion of women from the production of knowledge, this shielding indicates that the structure of the penal system itself is built to preserve prejudiced epistemic resources, based on racism and the maintenance of white privilege.