Death and Other Penalties : : Philosophy in a Time of Mass Incarceration / / Lisa Guenther, Scott Zeman; ed. by Geoffrey Adelsberg.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Guenther, Lisa,; Zeman, Scott,
• MitwirkendeR: Abdur'Rahman, Abu Ali,; Adelsberg, Geoffrey,; Ben-Moshe, Liat,; Dilts, Andrew,; Gossett, Che,; Guenther, Lisa,; Harbin, Ami,; Heiner, Brady,; James, Joy,; Kristeva, Julia,; Manos, James A.,; Mitchell, Nick,; Oliver, Kelly,; Quintero, Derrick,; Sakhi, Shokoufeh,; Shoatz, Russell "Maroon",; Smith, Andrea,; Stanley, Eric A.,; Switzer, Adrian,; Tyson, Sarah,; Whitt, Matt S.,; Yost, Benjamin S.,; Zeman, Scott,
• HerausgeberIn: Adelsberg, Geoffrey,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Fordham University Press, , [2015]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (424 p.)

Mass incarceration is one of the most pressing ethical and political issues of our time. In this volume, philosophers join activists and those incarcerated on death row to grapple with contemporary U.S. punishment practices and draw out critiques around questions of power, identity, justice, and ethical responsibility.This work takes shape against a backdrop of disturbing trends: The United States incarcerates more of its own citizens than any other country in the world. A disproportionate number of these prisoners are people of color, and, today, a black man has a greater chance of going to prison than to college. The United States is the only Western democracy to retain the death penalty, even after decades of scholarship, statistics, and even legal decisions have depicted a deeply flawed system structured by racism and class oppression.Motivated by a conviction that mass incarceration and state execution are among the most important ethical and political problems of our time, the contributors to this volume come together from a diverse range of backgrounds to analyze, critique, and envision alternatives to the injustices of the U.S. prison system, with recourse to deconstruction, phenomenology, critical race theory, feminism, queer theory, and disability studies. They engage with the hyper-incarceration of people of color, the incomplete abolition of slavery, the exploitation of prisoners as workers and as "raw material" for the prison industrial complex, the intensive confinement of prisoners in supermax units, and the complexities of capital punishment in an age of abolition.The resulting collection contributes to a growing intellectual and political resistance to the apparent inevitability of incarceration and state execution as responses to crime and to social inequalities. It addresses both philosophers and activists who seek intellectual resources to contest the injustices of punishment in the United States.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword: Life and Other Responsibilities -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Death and Other Penalties -- Legacies of Slavery -- Excavating the Sedimentations of Slavery: The Unfinished Project of American Abolition -- From Commodity Fetishism to Prison Fetishism: Slavery, Convict-leasing, and the Ideological Productions of Incarceration -- Maroon Philosophy: An Interview with Russell "Maroon" Shoatz -- Death Penalties -- In Reality-From the Row -- U.S. Racism and Derrida's Theologico-Political Sovereignty -- Making Death a Penalty: Or, Making "Good" Death a "Good" Penalty -- Death Penalty "Abolition" in Neoliberal Times: The SAFE California Act and the Nexus of Savings and Security -- On the Inviolability of Human Life -- Rethinking Power and Responsibility -- Punishment, Desert, and Equality: A Levinasian Analysis -- Prisons and Palliative Politics -- Sovereignty, Community, and the Incarceration of Immigrants -- Without the Right to Exist: Mass Incarceration and National Security -- Prison Abolition and a Culture of Sexual Difference -- Isolation and Resistance -- Statement on Solitary Confinement -- The Violence of the Supermax: Toward a Phenomenological Aesthetics of Prison Space -- Prison and the Subject of Resistance: A Levinasian Inquiry -- Critical Theory, Queer Resistance, and the Ends of Capture -- Notes -- Bibliography -- List of Contributors -- Index