Description

From the excesses of Puritan patriarchs to the barbarism of slavery and on into the prison-industrial complex, punishment in the US has a long and gruesome history.

In the post-Vietnam era, the prison population has increased tenfold and the death penalty has enjoyed a renaissance. Cruel and Unusual offers an exploration of the history of punishment as mediated in American culture. Grounding his analysis in Marxist theory, psychoanalysis and Foucault's influential work on discipline, Brian Jarvis examines a range of cultural texts, from seventeenth century execution sermons to twenty-first century prison films, to uncover the politics, economics and erotics of punishment.

This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary survey constructs a genealogy of cruelty through close reading of novels by Hawthorne and Melville, fictional accounts of the Rosenberg execution by Coover and Doctorow, slave narratives and prison writings by African Americans and the critically neglected genre of American prison films.

Cruel and Unusual: Punishment and U.S. Culture

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From the excesses of Puritan patriarchs to the barbarism of slavery and on into the prison-industrial complex, punishment in the... Read more

    Publisher: Pluto Press
    Publication Date: 20/01/2004
    ISBN13: 9780745315386, 978-0745315386
    ISBN10: 0745315380

    Number of Pages: 304

    Non Fiction , Politics, Philosophy & Society

    Description

    From the excesses of Puritan patriarchs to the barbarism of slavery and on into the prison-industrial complex, punishment in the US has a long and gruesome history.

    In the post-Vietnam era, the prison population has increased tenfold and the death penalty has enjoyed a renaissance. Cruel and Unusual offers an exploration of the history of punishment as mediated in American culture. Grounding his analysis in Marxist theory, psychoanalysis and Foucault's influential work on discipline, Brian Jarvis examines a range of cultural texts, from seventeenth century execution sermons to twenty-first century prison films, to uncover the politics, economics and erotics of punishment.

    This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary survey constructs a genealogy of cruelty through close reading of novels by Hawthorne and Melville, fictional accounts of the Rosenberg execution by Coover and Doctorow, slave narratives and prison writings by African Americans and the critically neglected genre of American prison films.

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