Deconstructing the Death Penalty: Derrida's Seminars and the New Abolitionism

272 Pages·2018·1.862 MB·English

by  Kelly Oliver (editor), Stephanie M. Straub (editor)

Deconstructing
the Death Penalty

Deconstructing
the Death Penalty
Derrida’s Seminars
and the New Abolitionism
Kelly Oliver
Stephanie M. Straub
and
Editors
fordham university press
New York 2018
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Oliver, Kelly, 1958– editor.
Title: Deconstructing the death penalty : Derrida’s seminars and the new
abolitionism / Kelly Oliver and Stephanie M. Straub, editors.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Fordham University Press, 2018.
| Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2017054130 | ISBN 9780823280100 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN
9780823280117 (pbk : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Derrida, Jacques. | Capital punishment—Philosophy. | Capital
punishment—Moral and ethical aspects. | Imprisonment—Moral and ethical
aspects. | Power (Social sciences)
Classifi cation: LCC HV8698 .D435 2018 | DDC 364.6601—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017054130
Printed in the United States of America
20 19 18 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
contents
Introduction. From Capital Punishment to Abolitionism:
Deconstructing the Death Penalty
stephanie m. straub 1
Part I reading derrida’s death penalty seminars
1. Beginning with Literature
peggy kamuf 13
2. A New Primal Scene: Derrida and the Scene of Execution
elizabeth rottenberg 32
3. Always the Other Who Decides: On Sovereignty,
Psychoanalysis, and the Death Penalty
michael naas 63
4. The Death Penalty and Its Exceptions
christina howells 87
Part II derrida and his interlocuters
5. Derrida at Montaigne: A Stay of Execution
katie chenoweth 101
6. “Bidding Up” on the Question of Sovereignty:
Derrida between Kant and Benjamin
kir kuiken 119
7. Calculus
kas saghafi 139
Part III extending derrida’s analysis
8. A Proper Death: Penalties, Animals, and the Law
nicole anderson 159
v
vi Contents
9. Figures of Interest: The Widow, the Telephone,
and the Time of Death
elissa marder 175
10. Opening the Blinds on Botched Executions:
Interrupting the Time of the Death Penalty
kelly oliver 186
Part IV derrida and capital punishment in the united states
11. Furman and Finitude
adam thurschwell 205
12. The Heart of the Other?
sarah tyson 226
13. An Abolitionism Worthy of the Name:
From the Death Penalty to the Prison Industrial Complex
lisa guenther 239
List of Contributors 259
Index 263
introduction
From Capital Punishment to Abolitionism:
Deconstructing the Death Penalty
Stephanie M. Straub
On December 8, 2016, exactly one month after Donald Trump had been
elected president of the United States, Ronald B. Smith was put to death in
the state of Alabama after a deadlocked Supreme Court refused to grant a
stay of execution in his case.1 After being administered a lethal dose of
potassium chloride, Smith reportedly began coughing, heaving, and clench-
2
ing his fi sts for thirteen minutes, fi nally dying at 11:05 P.M.
When I fi rst began writing this introduction, I had hoped that capital
punishment might be abolished in the United States in the near future. At
that time, it may have seemed strange to revisit a series of lectures on capital
punishment from 1999, given the dramatic changes that had occurred in
the American abolitionist movement, critical legal scholarship, and philo-
sophical work on sovereign power. Today, however, the urgency of this
volume is, unfortunately, all too clear. The current chief executive of the
United States has signaled his extreme support of the death penalty, once
going so far as to take out a full- page ad in the New York Times and three
other newspapers advocating for the execution of fi ve young black men
accused (wrongly) of assaulting and raping a white woman jogging through
Central Park.3 Indeed, Donald Trump’s intervention in the case of the
1
2 Stephanie M. Straub
so-c alled Central Park Five marks a pivotal moment in his rise to power,
perfectly encapsulating the racially charged authoritarian rhetoric that has
become the defi ning characteristic of his political career. In his theatrical
displays of power, his massive rallies (that have continued well past the
conclusion of the 2016 presidential campaign), and his claim to singularly
represent the voice of the people of the United States, Trump has undoubt-
edly become the terrifying new face of sovereign power.
The present volume, then, is sadly timely, especially given the radical
nature of Derrida’s abolitionism. Although the Death Penalty Seminars
focus very specifi cally on the issue of capital punishment, Derrida’s decon-
struction of the theologico-p olitical logic of sovereignty interrogates, at its
most basic level, the authority that the state holds over life and death.
While Foucault argues that the contemporary death penalty is the result of
a shift from traditional forms of sovereign power to new forms of regula-
tory power, Derrida’s investigation probes the continuing infl uence of
older models of sovereignty that continue to shape contemporary justifi ca-
tions for the most extreme applications of state power.4 However, Derrida
also extends his analysis beyond the criminal justice system, turning his
critical eye toward abolitionist discourses. Ultimately, in dismantling the
logic of abolitionism, Derrida hopes to formulate a new form of abolition-
ism, one that would not rely upon problematic theologico-p olitical struc-
tures. Even as he gestures toward this new form of abolitionism, however,
Derrida cautions that the end of capital punishment will not be the end of
the death penalty. Its logic, he warns, will live on in augmented forms and
will continue to claim lives.5 This new abolitionism, then, will have to
adapt to the shifting forms the death penalty takes and to the constantly
evolving forms of sovereign power.
Admittedly, the American abolitionist movement has evolved dramati-
cally in the sixteen years since Derrida fi rst issued his call to end capital
punishment. Activist scholars have increasingly asserted the necessity of
radically reforming the entire U.S. criminal justice system, transforming
the discourse around capital punishment such that it is now impossible to
address abolition in an American context without also confronting the
stark realities of racial inequality and mass incarceration. Just two years
after the conclusion of the Death Penalty Seminars, Angela Y. Davis pub-
lished Are Prisons Obsolete? (2004), highlighting racial disparities in Ameri-
can policing and challenging social justice advocates to question the very
practice of incarceration.6 Following in Davis’s footsteps, Michelle Alexan-
der argues that the mass incarceration of black men has effectively replaced
the Jim Crow laws, serving as a legal framework to deny African Americans
Introduction 3
the basic rights of citizenship.7 More recently, many others have examined
the deeply interconnected relationship between the prison-i ndustrial com-
plex and the practice of capital punishment, drawing on the work of phi-
losophers, activists, and intellectuals from an incredibly diverse array of
backgrounds and disciplines.8 To prison abolition advocates, then, Derri-
da’s prolonged investigation into the discourses surrounding capital pun-
ishment may seem strangely limited in its scope. And, of course, following
the extra-l egal but state-s anctioned murders of Trayvon Martin, Eric
Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Aiyana Stanley-J ones, Alton Sterling,
Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald, and countless others—far, far too many
others to name here—it is impossible to ignore the fact that capital pun-
ishment is not the only means of execution in the United States. In target-
ing the logic rather than the practice of capital punishment, however,
Derrida issues a radical challenge to the theologico-p olitical state itself.
Indeed, the Death Penalty Seminars both set up and foreshadow Derrida’s
extensive critique of sovereign power in his fi nal seminars, The Beast and
the Sovereign.
The present volume, then, represents an interdisciplinary effort to con-
tinue Derrida’s work and to begin to articulate what that new abolitionism
might look like. These essays place Derrida’s arguments against capital pun-
ishment in dialogue with contemporary intellectual debates about mass
incarceration, sovereign power, and the human-a nimal divide, widening
the scope of Derridean abolitionism far beyond the practice of capital
punishment. Drawing upon the insight from the fi elds of philosophy, law,
psychoanalysis, political theory, feminist theory, religious studies, and
posthumanism, our contributors work to mobilize Derrida’s abolitionism
against the ever-e volving logic of sovereignty. Admittedly, this volume will
likely chiefl y be of interest to Derrideans; however, it is our hope that
Derrida’s abolitionism will prove adaptable enough to serve an extensive
range of activists and scholars. By dismantling the theologico-p olitical
framework that undergirds not only the death penalty but all forms of
state- sanctioned violence, we aim to formulate a versatile form of aboli-
tionism—a methodological framework for confronting not only the death
penalty as we now know it but mass incarceration, police brutality, and all
the death penalties still to come.
Part I, “Reading Derrida’s Death Penalty Seminars,” provides a com-
prehensive introduction to Derridean abolitionism. The authors of these
essays—among whom we are lucky to count the translators of both vol-
umes of the Death Penalty Seminars—effectively explain and expand upon
Derrida’s key interventions: his unconventional deployment of literature,