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2. Prison Theory: Engaging the Work of Punishment
- NYU Press
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21 2 Prison Theory Engaging the Work of Punishment To punish is the most difficult thing there is. A society such as ours needs to question every aspect of punishment as it is practiced everywhere. —Michel Foucault, “To Punish Is the Most Difficult Thing There Is,” 2000 Because of the uniqueness of punishment as a social institution , theory plays a special and critical role in our understanding of it. This chapter assesses the place of the key concepts of this volume— penal spectatorship, culture, and work—by way of an interdisciplinary and theoretical dialogue on punishment, pain, and exclusion. Here I use theory as a means through which to disrupt and expand our conceptualizations of punishment and also as a model to rethink not only the project of punishment and its alternatives but the very approaches and assumptions as social scientists we employ in that pursuit. Perhaps most importantly, I wish to demonstrate our own complicity in punishment ’s practice with a new level of depth and extensiveness. Such an effort begins with the penal spectator who by definition looks in on punishment and yet is also its author. In this looking, this subject acts as bystander and outsider as opposed to an engaged participant or witness. She may stare curiously or reflectively, peer sideways from her peripheral vision, or gape and gawk directly, but the object of her gaze is inevitably other people’s pain. And it is this quality which complicates any kind of penal spectatorship. There are radically different ways of looking and participating in other people’s pain, ways in which we all participate. 22 Prison Theory At their most extreme ends, these ways of looking span a continuum marked by the most profound act of observing—witnessing—to its most profane: torture and, ultimately, killing. In this way, looking is always a mode of action and human will. The witness, as the ultimate observer, is someone whose privileged status depends upon a direct proximity to experience. Bearing witness not only demands an experience of the event but carries with it an endless burden of representation and articulation. In the most extreme of human instances, the witness can say what only the dead know—I experienced the event. And yet, even at the gates of Auschwitz, the witness with an unprecedented moral authority denies himself the role of judge. As political philosopher Giorgio Agamben writes, for the witness, “it is not judgment that matters to him, let alone pardon. . . . It seems, in fact, that the only thing that interests him is what makes judgment impossible: the gray zone in which victims become executioners and executioners become victims.”1 As Agamben goes on to elaborate, judgment, while perhaps necessary, implies a resolution or closure to problems that are impossible. In professing such judgment, at the gates of Auschwitz, Agamben writes: “Behind the powerlessness of God peeps the powerlessness of men, who continue to cry ‘May that never happen again!’ when it is clear that ‘that’ is, by now, everywhere.”2 Opposite to the witness is the torturer. Here, the vantage point extends from the orchestrator of pain, a position which requires that the punished be seen as a locus of danger and repugnance, justifiably deserving of immense and imminent violence. From the U.S. air base at Bagram to the military prison at Abu Ghraib, ordinary actors who engaged in the production of such pain describe a deepening ambiguity in law and authority which led to a confusion of proper roles and rules. In such settings, soldiers were persistently reminded that they held in their custody “the worst of the worst,” that fellow soldiers were dying in the war effort, that nations depended upon an end to terror which in turn depended upon information and “intelligence” contained in the bodies before them which must then be broken. In such times, they and the American people were told, the gloves must come off and all must spend time in the shadows. This rhetoric converged dangerously with military orders, boredom, and creative horseplay. Here, distanced penal spectators actively took on the role of punisher and torturer. Soldiers later described and justified their actions through a variety of logics, including those above. They were just following orders. They did not know that it was wrong to torture. They were just messing around. They were lost. The vast majority of the over [54.205.179.155] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 13:39 GMT) Prison Theory 23 80,000 detainees who...