From Reprisal to Reprise

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia Custer
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Implicit Arguments ◽  
History Of

Derrida reacted to Foucault’s History of Madness by insisting that the very project of that work, namely to “make madness speak,” was as mad as it was necessary. Sharing the commitments which gave sense and force to the gesture of the book, Derrida was drawn to identify the difficulties Foucault’s project could not, on his analysis, avoid. An untenable reading of Descartes, Derrida argued, was the symptom of the conflict between project and accomplishment; unsustainable by other standards, it held up the book’s architecture and claims. Thirty years later, Derrida professed not to want to return to the quarrel, declaring that those interested should refer to the archive already constituted. Exploring what Custer takes to be a delayed reactivation of the exchange, she considers why Derrida’s posthumous publications – notably his seminar on the Death Penalty and The Animal that therefore I am – should be added to this archive. Some implicit arguments in these works sound eerily the same as those with which Derrida had taken issue in his debate with Foucault. Custer suggests that this does not mark the possibility of a reconciliation but does offer a productive place from which to revisit the problem for which “Descartes” came to stand as a symbol. Today, when the project of giving voice to those who have been silenced has become a cliché of political activism and reading practices, it is useful to reactivate Derrida’s warnings about the mad nature of Foucault’s project.

Stranger Fictions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca C. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Arabic

Zaynab, first published in 1913, is widely cited as the first Arabic novel, yet the previous eight decades saw hundreds of novels translated into Arabic from English and French. This vast literary corpus influenced generations of Arab writers but has, until now, been considered a curious footnote in the genre's history. Incorporating these works into the history of the Arabic novel, this book offers a transformative new account of modern Arabic literature, world literature, and the novel. This book rewrites the history of the global circulation of the novel by moving Arabic literature from the margins of comparative literature to its center. Considering the wide range of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century translation practices, the book argues that Arabic translators did far more than copy European works; they authored new versions of them, producing sophisticated theorizations of the genre. These translations and the reading practices they precipitated form the conceptual and practical foundations of Arab literary modernity, necessitating an overhaul of our notions of translation, cultural exchange, and the global. The book shows how translators theorized the Arab world not as Europe's periphery but as an alternative center in a globalized network. It affirms the central place of (mis)translation in both the history of the novel in Arabic and the novel as a transnational form itself.

Intelligent and Civilized Sentiments

Lethal State ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 111-152
Author(s):  
Seth Kotch
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
State Law ◽  
Death Row ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Death Row Inmates ◽  
History Of ◽  
Tangible Result

This chapter tells the history of some of the elements that contributed to the declining use of the death penalty in North Carolina. Journalist Nell Battle Lewis railed against the practice as racist, un-Christian, and barbaric. Paul Green echoed those sentiments as he campaigned to save death row inmates from death. Yet their activism had little tangible result. More significant was a change in state law that allowed juries to formally recommend mercy following a conviction, meaning that judges were no longer required to deliver mandatory death sentences. The end of the mandatory death sentences ended executions, which ceased in 1961 and would not resume until 1984.

Cruelty and Its Vicissitudes

2019 ◽  
pp. 120-138
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Rottenberg
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of

This chapter tracks the history of cruelty in the administration of the death penalty. It moves from the history of blood (cruor) and bloody cruelty (e.g., the guillotine) to a history that involves the disappearance of blood and the non-bloody process of interiorization. It argues that psychical cruelty makes cruelty not only difficult to determine but also, as Jacques Derrida insists, one of the horizons most proper to psychoanalysis. This chapter begins by following the signs of the mutation of the death-dealing discourse in the Christian, European West; it ends by reading the Jewish joke as the sign of a psychoanalytico-philosophical alliance that is explosively out of tune with the political theology of the death penalty.

Lam Time

Killing Times ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 185-216
Author(s):  
David Wills
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Past History ◽  
Criminal Defense ◽  
History Of ◽  
Court Proceedings ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Multiple Homicide ◽  
Time Frames

This chapter puts the instant of execution into contrast with the different time frames of the crime itself and of court proceedings. The analysis works through a particular nineteenth-century multiple homicide in France—studied by a team led by Michel Foucault—committed by Pierre Rivière. The case is distinguished by the memoir that Rivière wrote as a justification for his crime but that, in various ways, became part of the crime itself. The murders occurred when “extenuating circumstances” were being accepted as a criminal defense and when psychological testimony was finding its way into proceedings. Both those tendencies extend the crime into the past history of the criminal mind and show how the moment of committing a crime becomes part of a longer narrative—or even literary—fantasy that is in some respects indistinguishable from what we understand as a motive. The chapter ends with a discussion of Kafka’s “death penalty” fiction.

The Future Anterior of Blood

Killing Times ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 87-118
Author(s):  
David Wills
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Lethal Injection ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

What is called the “temporal technology” of the human can be analyzed as a relation between time and blood. The death penalty reveals that relation not as a natural one but as a “prosthetic” one, whereby time gets attached to the human body in such a way that it mimics the flow of blood but at the same time shows that flow to be mechanically produced. That conclusion is reached by tracing a history of mortal time that links Socrates to Heidegger and by examining in detail Hegel’s promotion of blood as a figure for dialectical sublation in general, a blood that is simultaneously inside and outside the body. As a result, blood is “shed” by means of an execution whether it involves the guillotine or lethal injection.

Individuals and Society

Threats ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 47-120
Author(s):  
David P. Barash
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Effective Deterrent ◽  
Capital Crimes ◽  
Gun Culture ◽  
National Populism

This chapter examines threats and responses to threats as they play themselves out in human interactions. One of the significant topics here is crime and punishment—notably, how criminal statutes seek to prevent crime by threatening criminals with punishment sufficient to provide an effective deterrent. There is a long and fascinating history of such efforts, with very little success. This leads to a look at the death penalty in particular and whether it has been effective in preventing capital crimes. The chapter also assesses how people turn to religion when under threat, as well as how religions have often threatened their adherents with after-death retribution for sin, which has long influenced much human anxiety and, in some cases, compliance. Moreover, the chapter reflects on the menace of death plus threats involved in the American gun culture, and race-based and economic anxieties driving the rise of right-wing national populism.

The History of Mitigation in Death Penalty Cases

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-45
Author(s):  
Russell Stetler
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Eighth Amendment ◽  
Mitigating Factors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Effective Representation ◽  
The U.S

This chapter discusses how the theory and practice of mitigation have evolved over more than four decades, thereby helping to define the modern death penalty era in the United States. Prior to 1976, juries generally made death penalty decisions in a unitary proceeding. Juries then had unfettered discretion to impose death sentences, and the results were so arbitrary that in 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all the existing death penalty statutes. In 1976, the Court approved new statutes that guided jurors’ discretion. The Court required individualized sentencing in which jurors could consider mitigating factors based on the diverse frailties of humankind. This broad definition of what might inspire juries to reject death was elaborated in succeeding decades in a series of decisions relying on the Eighth Amendment. Social workers and other nonlawyers became critical members of multidisciplinary capital defense teams providing effective representation under the Sixth Amendment.

The Influence of Latino Ethnicity on the Imposition of the Death Penalty

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 421-431
Author(s):  
Sheri Lynn Johnson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Archival Studies ◽  
Related Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Era

With respect to African Americans, the history of racial discrimination in the imposition of the death penalty is well-known, and the persistence of racial disparities in the modern era of capital punishment is well-documented. In contrast, the influence of Latino ethnicity on the imposition of the death penalty has been studied very little. A review of the limited literature reveals evidence of discrimination against Latinos. Archival studies generally find ethnicity-of-victim discrimination, and some of those studies find ethnicity-of-defendant discrimination disadvantaging Latino defendants; these findings parallel the findings of the much more robust literature investigating bias against African American defendants and victims. The controlled experimental studies generally show both ethnicity-of-defendant and ethnicity-of-victim discrimination disadvantaging Latinos. Related literature investigating stereotypes, animosity, and discrimination in other criminal justice decisions further suggests the likelihood of ethnicity discrimination in the imposition of capital punishment, as well as the need for further research.

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