Journal article
The Jena Six and Black Punishment: Law and Raw Life in the Domain of Nonexistence
Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Vol.7(1), p235
2008
Abstract
Over the course of the next three parts of this article, we trace the origins and development of raw life. From this vantage point, the form of power operative in our contemporary prison regime is embodied in the desire of whites to literally consume the bodies of racialized Others. The history of colonization is replete with records of Europeans literally carving, cooking, and using the bodies of indigenous Africans and Americans. The history of North American slavery further demonstrates how modern idioms of power are vested in the fungibility of black bodies—their usefulness for the whims and purposes of whites. Our objective here, then, is to closely examine how the state-sanctioned control of the black body from slavery to the contemporary prison regime—an analysis that usually remains at the level of analogy, that the criminal justice system today is like the slavery of yesterday—illumines just how intimately the past structures contemporary struggles.
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Details
- Title
- The Jena Six and Black Punishment: Law and Raw Life in the Domain of Nonexistence
- Creators
- Donald F Tibbs - Drexel University, Thomas R. Kline School of LawTryon P Woods (Author)
- Publication Details
- Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Vol.7(1), p235
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Thomas R. Kline School of Law
- Identifiers
- 991021902912604721