Right, Responsibility, and Resistance: Mapping the Reproductive Labor of Carceral Motherhood in Leonera (2008)

Abstract

This article explores how Pablo Trapero’s Leonera (2008) reworks the visual tropes and narrative structures of the women-in-prison genre in its representation of motherhood inside prison. It argues that the film develops a complex understanding of the multiple textures of carceral motherhood: a fragile legal right, a state-mandated responsibility to carry out unpaid reproductive labor, and the basis of collective, embodied resistance against multiple forms of legal, economic, and moral violence. In order to reach this conclusion, the article brings together sociological and criminological analyses of the inequalities embedded in the reproductive labor of childcare, feminist theories of embodied resistance, and cinematic studies of the (women-in-)prison film. By combining these perspectives, this study emphasizes the ambivalence of Leonera: Trapero’s film both reproduces and creatively reworks a problematic generic tradition; politically, it critiques the state’s role in exacerbating the challenges of carrying out childcare in prison while also gesturing towards state-based reform as a solution.